The music still plays, eerie and echoing, and the escalators still trundle, carrying lazy ghosts to this or that empty storefront. Photo by Brandon R. Reynolds.
What a comedown for a mall whose parking lot is more famous for another movie: the spot where the DeLorean-turned-time machine got up to speed in 1985’s Back to the Future.
Gina van Stratten and Falynn Love grew up nearby, back when their parents would drop them off with 20 bucks so they could hang out, sitting in the massage chair without turning it on, eating an oversized pretzel, and even, in Love’s case, making life-altering discoveries.
”I met my husband here in 2001,” says Love. “He was here with a friend going to the movies, I was here with my cousin going to the movies. We looked down over that balcony, and they were like, ‘Come here. Come here.’”
Gina van Sratten and Falynn Love survey the desert of their teen years.
Photo by Brandon R. Reynolds.
In 1985, there were about 1,500 indoor malls dominating US cultural life. In the last half of the 20th century, malls were huge drivers of tax revenue, jobs, and real estate development. They were such a big deal that in 1986, Consumer Reports ranked the mall as one of the great consumer innovations of the 20th century, right up there with refrigerators and, no kidding, antibiotics.
Opened in 1974, Puente Hills Mall in its heyday was home to around 150 tenants — retail staples like Macy’s, Forever 21, and Star Shots, where ‘90s teens captured their awkward transition into adulthood through soft focus and dangerous levels of hairspray.
So what happened to the Puente Hills Mall? The 21st century happened: the rise of e-commerce, the 2008 financial crisis, the pandemic. Plus, the fact that Baby Boomers command most of America’s buying power. And Boomers ain’t got a need for Forever 21.
Today’s indoor mall shoppers are not, in fact, forever 21. Photo by Brandon R. Reynolds.
Now there are half the number of malls as in the old days, mostly in more affluent areas. Ellen Dunham-Jones of the Georgia Institute of Technology says dead malls have been turned into everything from office space to churches.
“You'll see malls becoming almost entirely taken over as healthcare, or becoming educational institutions,” she says. “Cities move their city halls, move city services into those malls.”
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As for the Puente Hills Mall, it’s on track to become a distribution hub. The plan is to turn this space into two million square feet of fulfillment centers for an Amazon or a Walmart, plus a six or seven megawatt data center to run logistics for those warehouses.
Yes, the place where people used to go to buy stuff will someday be a place that sends stuff to people’s homes so that they don’t need to go to a place to buy stuff.
Residents have a lot of concerns about the proposed facility: power and water demands, truck traffic, and, of course, the loss of a third space.
You might think, well, that’s the way it goes — malls are on the way out. But in fact, the death of the mall may be overstated.
“I think the more time all of us spend online, the more time we want our leisure to connect us with other people, help us feel part of a larger community — whether we're actually talking to them or not — and help us breathe some fresh air and see some greenery,” says Dunham-Jones.
Outdoor malls are doing much better than the old-school indoor-atrium style. Developers are picking up on that in places like DC and Dallas. Also LA, where the open-air Westfield Century City mall got a billion-dollar facelift in 2017, and another nearly billion dollars in refinancing last year.
Puente Hills Mall didn’t go down without a fight. In 2017, the previous owners proposed adding 80,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space. But that never happened. The owner raised rents; the pandemic drove everyone out of public spaces.
Walking around the mall today, Falynn Love and Gina Van Stratten say it didn’t have to be this way.
“It could have been something to serve the communities, and that's what we want,” says Love.
Our romantic futures may depend on it.
“How am I supposed to date if there's no malls to find my future husband?” van Stratten wants to know.
The American mall of the 21st century is changing, but a place where you can find a cute top, and some community, and possibly even the love of your life — that’s just too good an idea to ever die.
Got a good mall story? Send it to us: brandon.reynolds@kcrw.org
