Towne Mall on 'endangered' list? Big surprise

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By Rick McCrabb, Columnist Updated 1:24 AM Thursday, July 2, 2009

MIDDLETOWN — This town is upside down.

As I write this Wednesday, July 1, there’s a traffic jam downtown, and the parking lot at the Towne Mall is nothing but empty, potholed pavement.

Even though the skies were cloudy and there was a threat of rain, hundreds — if not thousands — of people were downtown Wednesday for the Broad Street Bash, which featured The Menus, the popular cover band.

Meanwhile, across town — in the East End, this city’s pride and joy, its future — the only menu items at the Towne Mall were hot dogs and three-way chili from Gold Star and pretzels from Twisted.

I know this will come as a surprise, but the Towne Mall recently was named one of America’s Most Endangered Malls in an article by Rick Newman, a blogger with U.S. News and World Report.

Endangered? The Towne Mall? Dinosaurs have a better chance of making a comeback.

Middletown Vice Mayor Jim Armbruster, a Middletown native, laughed at the report. Or at least how he wasn’t surprised by the results.

“The fact that the article said the mall is endangered is no new news,” Armbruster said. “We already knew that a long time ago.”

Katie Reinsmidt, of Chattanooga-based CBL & Associates, the owners of the Towne Mall, said, “There’s a bright future for the center and we’re going to keep working toward that. CBL is not subscribing to the ‘endangered malls’ thought.”

Not believing everything I read, I drove to the mall Wednesday. At 1 p.m., I counted 47 cars in the parking lot, and I’m guessing at least a few belonged to employees.

Once inside, with notebook in hand, I walked around the mall and counted the occupied and empty retail locations. The empty stores — those with “for lease” signs plastered on the doors — outnumbered those in business, 31-23.

In one wing of the mall, the one with Sears as the anchor, of the 17 locations, six were occupied. Only the Reds have a lower batting average.

Did someone say “endangered?”

The most fun came when a security officer approached me and asked what I was doing. He said someone had reported a suspicious person. Any potential shopper, I guess, could be called suspicious.

Anyway, I told him I was interested in buying the place and hiring a new security company. He didn’t see the humor.

Right now, these are not fun times at the mall.

Contact this

columnist

at (513) 705-2842 or rmccrabb@coxohio.com.

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The Towne Mall used to be a good place to go before Middletown got hold of it. Middletown is more interested in red light cameras and how many people they can cite for having to much in their yards or how high the grass is. Hopefully one day Middletown can think about getting life back into the city. Middletown used to be a good place a few years back, but keeps going down hill. Maybe it's time to get new people on council and a new planning commission?

Disgusted citizen
9:56 AM, 7/17/2009

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yeah the mall is facing hard times, but this reporter always writes negative articles and its probably because once he was allegedly thrown out of the mall for harassing people!

scott
5:50 AM, 7/3/2009

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Well Well Well Middletown, it looks like you did it again, the downtown mall is now a road again, and now the Towne Mall is going to be in the Middletown Journal Obituaries soon. Guess Middletown should have stopped its City Limits at Cincy Dayton Rd,instead of being so **** greedy and wanting to take property and taxes from Franklin Twp/Warren County. See you can't even keep the Fire Station Staffed like Franklin Twp did and they were a Vol dept. Thats why everybody heads towards dayton now.

Lmao
2:01 AM, 7/3/2009

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lol, this CBL associates have said numerous times they were working on the mall and there would be some decision made, but the months keep passing and the years keep coming and going. They aren't going to do anything because they are waiting for money from the city and we all know that isn't coming any time soon!

Sammy
7:10 PM, 7/2/2009

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Thousands at Broadstreet Bash is stretching the truth, but the efforts to bring people to the downtown area are paying off. The problem is that people don't identify themselves with "their" town, being all of Middletown and they should.

Resident's are the best real estate agents, marketing managers, and salesmen ever known. With all this complaining they are doing a poor job selling their product.

Compare Middletown to the heart of Dayton or Cincinnati and you'll find sunshine!

jiveman
12:52 PM, 7/2/2009

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