Swansea Mall, Swansea, MA

Why do I keep visiting malls on the brink of closure? Either way here’s the Swansea Mall just east of Providence. This was once the premier shopping mall in Providence so let’s see how it fell.

Swansea Mall opened with two anchors Sears and Edgar Department Store which was founded in Brockton, MA. Swansea Mall got two more anchors from an expansion in 1980 Caldor and Rhode Island’s Apex. In 1089 the mall had a major renovation the cinema was removed. Edgar’s left the mall and Boston based Jordan Marsh. The mall’s logo was changed to what it was when it closed. In 1996 Jordan Marsh closed all their stores and were converted into a Macy’s. The Caldor stores had a fire in their store in 1997. Many restaurants left in the 90’s and that is where I think the decline started. In 1995 the mall opened a food court at the Caldor end of the mall.

In 2001 Walmart opened in the former Caldor and Apex shut down. Walmart moved out of the mall in 2013 into an outparcel building. In January of 2014 Carlyle Development put the mall up for sale and cut ties with Jones Lang Lasalle. Kaplan Retail Consulting were hired to lease the mall. On December 28, 2016 Sears announced that they would be closing their Swansea store in March, 2017 leaving only one anchor Macy’s. On January 9, 2019 Macy’s announced their closure at the mall on March 31. On January 31st, 2019 the mall finally announced their closure.

I think this mall died for a few reasons. One, many of the malls of the malls in the Providence area are upscale, modern, big, and just had stores that people shopped at. Here that wasn’t really the case they would turn some stores into sad arcades and leave no where for people to eat in an empty food court and I got the impression that the owners did not care about the mall just like Greendale Mall or The Mall at The Source. The malls in Providence are almost too dominant like Providence Place or Emerald Square. Which is obviously fine but that means you can’t build a mall and then not care about it at ANY point. I do know that is how it is everywhere. This mall also just a not clean and about to be shuttered. Enjoy my photos!

Here are my photos of Swansea Mall that I took on August 5. 2018 just before closing time. Enjoy!

2018

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Greendale Mall, Worcester, MA

As my return post to the blog, I decided the best mall to write about is the now-demolished Greendale Mall in Worcester, Massachusetts. Greendale Mall was a very different place in design, department stores, and its tiny footprint. However, this small footprint was a key marketing tactic that the mall used in its earlier years and was proven to have worked because of how successful the mall was up until the 2010s. I can see what was so appealing about this mall before it died and it is unfortunate that I never got to see it at that stage of its life. Greendale Mall opened in 1987 and was a product of New England Development also developed the Arsenal Mall in Watertown which was one of my childhood malls I have many memories there in its final years. I am very familiar with the now-shuttered mall and can tell you firsthand that Arsenal and Greendale are very similar architecturally and in many other ways as well. At Greendale's opening, it was the second mall in the city of Worce

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