As a Wadsworth native I quite literally grew up in this mall. All my Holiday outfits, school clothes, Mother's Day gifts (remember Cargo Express?), engagement ring, and even my Homecoming dress were purchased here. I had my first manicure, first makeover, and best haircuts here. Even my podiatrist had a storefront once. I got my ears pierced here, lost my favorite teddy bear, learned to ride an escalator,and lost a tooth in a Milk Dud in the movie theatre. We ate in the smoky JCPenney diner, The Terrace in O'Neils, Friendly's, and the York Steakhouse, and had Brody's Frozen Yogurt for dessert. This was the destination for ALL our shopping and activities. There was even a Travel Agency! Anybody remember that the best roller skater from the Barberton rink was a Sears security guard?
And now it's an Amazon distribution center, how does that make you feel that the area is thriving again but now in a different environment than what it was prior ?
I am a second generation worker at Rollin Acres. My father worked at Play Palace back in the 70's-80's and we got all the FREE video game plays we wanted. I worked at American Commodore Tuxedo and Spencers in the 90's-2000's. Best mall ever! Sad it closed.....heartbreaking....😿
the last store of Rolling Acres (JC PENNEY OUTLET) is having it's last day of buisness today (12-30-2013) there will be NOTHING left of the mall after today.
Actually,no.Storage of America and Pinnacle Recycling are in the old Target and Sears spaces and also I think someone moved into the vacant Dillard's. Can anyone clarify?
This place was also a BIG part of my life in my teenage years. But after the Malcolm X movie was played, all hell broke loose and there was rioting, ever since that day that mall was doooomed. Then there was a few people robbed and then the rumors started. People were scared and stopped going! Criminals started coming along with the serious crime, and well, that was that! Thanks Guys for putting another good thing out of business. Yours truly, Tony
This mall reminds me of Kansas City's long lost "Bannister Mall" Bannister mall was much larger than Rolling acres and has yet been torn down now for over 7 years. So sad that Malls in America are becoming a dying breed. They have been for the past 16 to 20 years already! wow.
I remember when I was little in the 80's I loved to go to Rolling Acres mall. We lived by Chapel Hill before it had all the renovations(so I've heard I no longer live in OH). This mall reminds me of my mother who is buried in the cemetary next door. This just makes me sad.
The messed up thing is they knew when they built this mall in the 70s that based on population projections that this mall would fail owing to urban sprawl. As long as the investors cash out with lots of dough that is all that matters.
The mall was developed by Forest City Enterprises and opened in August 1975. In 2000, Forest City Enterprises sold the mall for $33.5 million to Bankers Trust after seeing what was going on a nearby mall. Shortly after it was sold again for $2.75 million and stores started leaving in 2003. That mysterious company did not take care of the maill and finally closing in 2008 after they couldn't afford the power
All of them to me are heart breaking to watch because they are just stores sure, but really as kids , malls were really a place to hang out and be yourself away from home for the first time .. it's comforting. It has nothing to do with shopping really in my opinion. It's sad - now we're all disconnected online instead of offline in malls together... :(
Only in America do we build these super structures then slowly neglect them for 40 years, let 'em sit empty for 5 or 10 years and finally knock em down.......its just sad.
+TheFrozenGargon I know right, people don't seem to care that china has whole citys being built to sit empty , millions of empty apartments since the late 90s and still growing . I guess current events to some people arn't a thing :)
Your right , I do seem to forget hating is what people do best since the dawn of time. I tend to want to pretend things could turn out different each generation. I don't know why I want to hold on to that hope for , seems so much like a far distant fairytale. But hey we can dream.TheFrozenGargon
The mall was developed by Forest City Enterprises and opened in August 1975. In 2000, Forest City Enterprises sold the mall for $33.5 million to Bankers Trust. Shortly after it was sold again for $2.75 million and stores started leaving in 2003. That mysterious company did not take care of the maill and finally closing in 2008 after they couldn't afford the power
TONS of rolling acres mall videos... THIS is the only one worth showing - so well done and kind. It's sweet. I still come back to see how it was handled... terribly of course .. so this matters.
thank you for putting this up. Excellent video. wonderful images. I am new to the Akron area, and I discovered this mall due to the JCpenney outlet. Every time I go I walk the mall and wonder about her former glory. From your video I could tell how beautiful she was. It is very sad.
I remember coming to this place alot as a kid. Every weekend, my mom would take me and my brothers here for shopping. When I heard it closed down, I was DEVASTATED. It was like losing a part of your childhood. JCPenney was opened still, but the place just shut down. Me and all I knew who went there, we cried and celebrated the mall's history before it closed for good. I just hope that one day, someone would see the good things this mall brought to the city and maybe bring it back. History can be saved and restored. I hope the city would fix the place up and bring it back onto the map :')
Kinda wish you didn't do those filters on your video footage, because now we don't have nice clean imagery of the mall back when it was still in relatively clean condition.
What's even worse is how quickly this mall literally fell apart after it closed in 2008 (both from vandalism and structural issues, leaks, etc)... See the video titled "Abandoned Rolling Acres Mall, Akron 2012"...
There's another video called Abandoned Rolling Acres Mall that was posted in 2009 by Gabriel Troppe, which really provides a picture of what the mall looked like between it's closing in 2008 and 2012 and beyond where it totally fell apart. It really didn't look that bad, and could have been salvaged if the city or someone else who was interested managed to buy the building. Apparently in 2011 the owner of the mall stopped paying for security, which is probably what led to interior to be vandalized and destroyed to the extent that when the city finally managed to take over the mall, they had no choice but to tear it down.
I remember ( when visiting the arcade ) you could look down into the pit and see Christmas items set up in it during the season , ( but removed later when the lower section was finished )
Greed killed off this mall! Teen violence, especially the movie "Menace to Society" caused a near riot at the theater inside the mall. Post 911 paranoia kept many away from the malls. Internet stores claimed the mall customers in that shoppers now could shop in their birthday suits if they wished. Funny that Amazon has a facility in the exact same spot as where Rolling Acres once stood. Rolling Acres, gone but NOT forgotten.
This comment hurt .. I am from California and worked for a Mall called Vallco Shopping Plaza.. it was leveled... such great memories there. Thank you Sandi.
Exactly, when people don't have the extra money to spend from earning a living wage it reduces consumer demand, the vehicle which drives the economy, not tax cuts for the rich or large corporations which is a scam to say the least.
I think you've explained it really well. Buildings seem to have their own special kinds of souls made up of years of memories...In a sense, they become like old friends...
So sad. This always used to be the place to be. I would usually be up there every weekend. After Target opened I worked there for like a year. I'd always go out and eat in the mall for lunch. It was always sad how much different it looked by that point. No one walking the halls. There were probably 5-6 stores open in the entire mall at that point. Alladin's Castle was the name of the arcade upstairs above the food court. R.I.P.
This video brought me to tears. Rolling Acres Mall, without even knowing anything about it before, had brought me into liking dead malls and even malls in general. I wish I could have gotten to see this place in its heyday.. It was a beautiful mall. At least I am coming up to see Chapel Hill Mall this summer.. hopefully it'll be still open by late June-early July of 2019..
@@SearsCool Hey, it's been over a year now... I wasn't able to get to Akron last year, but I hope to go soon, once this crazy virus slows down. Any updates on CHM's status? Has it closed, or is it still open?
@@Karmy. Ah dear... At least the CHM carousel was saved, as far as I've heard... Screw Kohan is all I have to say. He was the main contributor to the mall's downfall, because he did nothing to try and help it. What a terrible man, only leeching money from these burnt-out malls when he could've done *so* much more with them (ex. remodeling, more attractions inside the mall, increased security, etc.) and gained a bunch more money through that. My motto, which is perfectly fitting for this situation, is "Give, and you will receive." Kohan, among many other mall-owners, _never_ do that. I guess it's just the harsh, unfortunate reality of business nowadays...
Thank you so much for posting this, it made me cry As a kid we spent so many weekend here, I can still remember my mom waiting for popcorn from the popcorn cart, or my dad getting ice cream at baskin Robbins. I fell in that orange fountain as a kid. We ate at York all the time andriding the elevator felt like I was something special.my dad would buy us one balloon and find some that were way up top in the high ceiling, he would send one balloon up there and wrap the string around the lostBalloon
I'm surprised too but sadly malls around America have become a dying breed for the past 25 years now. Bannister Mall in Kansas city was much larger than all of those malls you just mentioned it was demolished way back in 2009. It was only built in 1980. Nearly made it to 30 years but with the way that things change in certain areas it really does have a great impact.
my parents worked here when i was 9-12 years old, now im 15 but yea. brings back alot of memories, i used to go there everyday to work with my mom, i made alot of mall friends, as in workers in stores, and other kids that go there basically everyday with their parents too. i once got up the elevator and got stuck, i went to alladin's castle arcade everyday and made very good friends with a worker there that taught me karate moves and how to play this one game, his name was Lee.
It hasn't closed up, although it's still pretty empty. It has about 1/5 of the stores in use, plus three of the five anchor stores, the food court, and I believe the theater is open. If you go there during the day it is very possible to not see anyone in sight, but it is open. BTW there are some exterior shots; the one at 5:32 is the outside of the old Target; the one at 5:28 I'm pretty sure is from the building across the street, not the mall.
Oh, how a video like this teaches us to take nothing for granted. My beloved mall, the one that was new when I was a kid in 1981... is dying now as well. I really never, ever saw such an event coming. Call me a sissy, but your video teared me up. Like the death of a friend, it is hard to see this happen.
My Grandmother Lives near here and when i was a child (Back When The Front Enterence was wooden)it was very packed Im going to visit there before its completely gone
Ncely done. I loved Montgomery Wards, and the mall near where I lived. It was THE place for the kids to hang out on the weekends. Its sooo sad to see these places die. The buildings may stand empty, but the memories, we all have of the good times and shopping in them will never go away.
Such a cool tribute, beautiful song... reminds me of our mall,"The Mall of Memphis" 1981 - 2003, and demolished in 2004. So sad to see malls die like this ;(
He would bring gown 2 balloons, he was a steelworker and didn't say much, but when he got us those balloons I knew he loved us. My mom passed away andmy dad has. Alzheimer's anddoesnt remember those times so all I have left are my memories. I wish I could go back to that time even if for one moment
my parents worked in Nails pizzaz right behind the elevator in 3:59. I used to go to the phone store next to there to talk to the workers, there was thsi really nice lady that worked in the score right on top of the escalator, she used to give me those stuffed animal toys for free. there used to be an ice cream store around the food court too. so many memories i cant even explain it all. i think out of all the ppl here id have to say i have the most childhood memories, i went there EVERYDAY. =(
@LovinLife7777 I just made a comment like that on another video. I feel your pain. I was born in 1980 and I remember my elementry school dying when I was in high school, I visited it and the memories i had with my friends there were haunting. I cant imagine the Water Tower Place, now my local mall, dying like this. It's just so sad and disturbing. As for the maker of the video, Great job!
Sad to see these places die like this. When a new mall is built the old one gets ignored as every one rushes to the fancy shinny place. Less customers so stores close. As the stores close the owners can no longer afford to keep the place up. As it falls apart fewer people want to shop there. Silly we keep building new stores taking up more and more land. Think George Carlin put it best when it came to shopping
had nothing to do with a new mall, go look at the neighborhood and the "groups" of people that cling around there. stores where being stole from and started closing and it was a domino effect.
***** you're an idiot. The perception of crime is what drove people away, not actual crime.. Every single mall is full of shitty teenagers trying to shoplift. Rolling Acres had multiple problems. One of the major ones being horrible freeway access.. Go to chapel hill, the demographic is no different, but it's still open. Rolling Acres down fall has nothing to do with "liberalism".
Gangularis Guessing you have never been to Romig Rd. it has 2 highway exits less than a mile away allot closer than summit mall. Also "every single mall is full of shit teenagers" - thats like saying every single city is full of shit teenagers but you'll never see me moving to cleveland, same with people who said "I wont have my store in that mall"
Matthew Starcher wrong. I lived off of Romig road less than a year ago. The freeway access to rolling acres is a tragedy and a joke. Your desperate analogy is also a joke.. Comparing a city to a mall is beyond moronic.. In fact downtown Cleveland's mall is still open.. So how do you explain away that in your idiotic analogy?
Thank you for this video. We were just at Sears today...it will be closing at the end of the month. Penney's is soon going to follow suit from what I understand. There are windows in Penney's you can look through and see into the once wonderful mall. Very sad.....beautiful video!
Hi thank you for posting this. Rolling Acres was my favorite mall and I still go there to the JC Penney Outlet from time to time. I noticed the entrance to the mall on the first floor of Penneys is not blocked I will miss it. I agree with the ad in your video that the Court of 12 Trees was a beautiful place. I can't believe what happened. Does anyone know the story? I heard a rumor someone bought the mall and raised the lease rates. Thanks for posting agin.
I miss this mall. I used to come to Rolling Acres Mall all the time. This was my favorite mall back in my childhood and teenage years. I sucks what happened with this mall. Now Chapel Hill Mall is out of business. So now, Summit Mall is now the only mall open in Akron now and they're still going strong. Carnation Mall in Alliance, Ohio was just torn down, they're building a Meijer in it's place. Shenango Valley Mall in Hermitage, Pennsylvania is now going out of business at the end of May. They're now losing their last anchor store which is JCPenney. It's gonna be torn down later this year. I miss these malls. At least the Summit Mall and the Belden Village Mall are still open as well as the Eastwood Mall in Niles, Ohio. These malls are still going strong to this day.
There're were too many malls in Ohio, in northern Ohio there were 11 or 12; Westgate, Midway, Erieview, Tower City, Euclid Square, Randall, Richmond, Beachwood, Great Northern, Southpark, and Great Lakes, now only four of the original malls are used Southpark, Great Northern, Great Lakes, and Beachwood, a handful of the stores at all three malls are not really chain stores anymore, and Great Northern, Great Lakes and Southpark have announced some sort of redevelopment and rezoning, and those three also have at least one empty corridors Great Northern's Sears wing, Southpark's Sears and Macy's wing, and Great Lake's Sears and Macy's anchors are closed and both ends have empty corridors. I think Great Lakes would be the first to close, then Great Northern or Southpark (depending on which one redevelops first, I think Great Northern will redo first then Southpark would die or stagnate), Beachwood is most likely going to outlive all the malls in Cuyahoga county.
0:20 the only pic so far that I've seen of the main entrance with the original logo... I've seen plenty of that same entrance with the later two logos but not this one...
Great video. Really drives home the sad feeling of what this mall has become. Sorry to see that, like other malls with fountains, an ugly fence/barrier had to be put up to keep kids from getting hurt because many parents today don't teach them to respect property. More likely they would be the first in line to sue the mall.
I never even visited this mall and this video made me a bit blue. As a child of the 70's there are few sights sadder than watching a mall - symbol of life, fun, and activity - die a horrible death like this. Just awful. Sad as it is, this video captures this all-too-common sight across the country since the early part of this decade. Well captured.
it's so sad to see that happen. I thought that was going to happen to Bay Shore Mall on Long Island, NY. When i went there a month ago it was dead empty, but just this past saturday i saw that there was only one empty store and the mall was booming again. -KEVIN-
I grew up with this as our closest mall through the 90s.. even back then, half of the stores in the building were out of business, and half of the ones left were really strange stores where nobody wanted to shop (unless you want a blue velvet pimp suit--anybody remember that store??). It's not surprising it went out of business. It didn't help that for many years, it was 15-20 years outdated, and yes, as fewer people were shopping there, more people with bad intentions starting hanging around.
I just heard today in the news that the mall will be closing sometime between October 27 (This Monday) and October 31 (This Friday). The owner chose not to pay the electric bill so the moment the utility shuts off the mall's power, the mall will be closed. The 8 stores in the mall itself that are still open have been told about the power outage and closing and that they will have to either move or close. Sears and JCPenney Outlet will remain open.
I'll always miss the 'heyday' of the late 70's through the early 90's. The business feeling was "Porsches & Perrier' ...just 'Go for it!" We'd go to the 'upscale' malls and they were always busy.. People just enjoyed window-shopping...to see what was new. We saw the beginning of the declines by mid 90's... It's been downhill ever since. Now it's depressing to see the 'closed' signs and the look on people's aces... they also have 'closed' signs in their eyes...
This is a great video. I was a total Rolling Acres Mall rat when I was 12 and 13. Me and Barb( you know who you are-roving around, watching scary movies, buying custom made t shirts) It was great fun. I miss our mall(and I hate to shop).
We have that at one nice swanky mall where I live.The mall is very popular but some teens got into a fight last year so they're really patrolling it more now too.
Ill never forget the way the UFCW threw all of it's ACME members under the bus during contract negotiations by allowing the company to make two contracts one the public members would see and one only the attorneys of the union would see. Guess which one gave them the ability to lay off people with seniority? I remember ACME lied about the layoffs in the paper saying that they didnt hire anyone to replace use which was total and utter bs as they hired three young kids out of high school before.
Oh, how sad this glorious mall in NE Ohio is failing. Think of the architectural heritage which will be lost! The elegant days of heady spending have come to an end. This is indeed a sad day for our great nation.
One of the biggest things leading to the demise of this mall is that there is no other commercial activity within walking distance, when built in 1975. Successful malls are surrounded by shopping plazas, restaurants, hotels, even in some cases airports. Another factor, which did not help,was the outsourcing of manufacturing, and other jobs, to China in the early 2000s. People in this area no longer had money to enjoy the luxuries of malls like this one.
Unions in general exist for the benefit of the bureaucrats that run them. I remember one of our managers got a job with the UFCW and as a perk he gets a free car every year and reimbursement for various "expenses". The biggest mistake they made was letting high school kids vote on the contract as most of them would be leaving anyways in a few years. So what happened? Pay tiered system was put in place which allowed targeted lay offs
such a shame. I feel we've lost something special and will never get it back. All of us saddled in debt, prices not keeping pace with income and our country gleefully speeding towards bankruptcy. Seems it all started falling apart after the glorious 80's.
Their are many factors on why a mall dies, though most deal with money. Cost of upkeep of the mall. (bathrooms/floors don't clean themselves & repairs needed) How much is rent? (a mall died because the management then wanted not only normal rent, but a % of the shops profits & update the store front every 3 yrs) Pop-culture & ease of shopping are also factors. Sad that these once 'new centers of the community' have generally fallen out of favor. I still perfer to shop at one over big-box or net.
10 years of neglecting Rolling Acres and now it has finally been put out of its misery. Gone but not forgotten. RIP
As a Wadsworth native I quite literally grew up in this mall. All my Holiday outfits, school clothes, Mother's Day gifts (remember Cargo Express?), engagement ring, and even my Homecoming dress were purchased here. I had my first manicure, first makeover, and best haircuts here. Even my podiatrist had a storefront once. I got my ears pierced here, lost my favorite teddy bear, learned to ride an escalator,and lost a tooth in a Milk Dud in the movie theatre. We ate in the smoky JCPenney diner, The Terrace in O'Neils, Friendly's, and the York Steakhouse, and had Brody's Frozen Yogurt for dessert. This was the destination for ALL our shopping and activities. There was even a Travel Agency! Anybody remember that the best roller skater from the Barberton rink was a Sears security guard?
And now it's an Amazon distribution center, how does that make you feel that the area is thriving again but now in a different environment than what it was prior ?
Totally remember the roller rink. Was that the one with the disco floor in the corner? Used to go there with mom when I was young.
The property used to be the Ries Farm. My Great-Great Grandma used to live there. My Grandma told me this years ago
This is the best Rolling Acres "Dead" mall video out there and one of the first about this mall to be posted on youtube !
Crazy how this mall was still open when this video was posted
I am a second generation worker at Rollin Acres. My father worked at Play Palace back in the 70's-80's and we got all the FREE video game plays we wanted. I worked at American Commodore Tuxedo and Spencers in the 90's-2000's. Best mall ever! Sad it closed.....heartbreaking....😿
goodbye my friend you maybe gone my memories are forever thank you for the fun and joy in my growing years..thank you for the memories my friend......
Wow..great video. So sad to see that it went from this to what it is today...
the last store of Rolling Acres (JC PENNEY OUTLET) is having it's last day of buisness today (12-30-2013) there will be NOTHING left of the mall after today.
Actually,no.Storage of America and Pinnacle Recycling are in the old Target and Sears spaces and also I think someone moved into the vacant Dillard's. Can anyone clarify?
I think someone owns it but I'm pretty sure its just used for storage
@@Hudsonsguynascarconnor old man storage or something
Sears Cool it’s on rolling acres street view it says “old main storage”
This place was also a BIG part of my life in my teenage years. But after the Malcolm X movie was played, all hell broke loose and there was rioting, ever since that day that mall was doooomed. Then there was a few people robbed and then the rumors started. People were scared and stopped going! Criminals started coming along with the serious crime, and well, that was that! Thanks Guys for putting another good thing out of business.
Yours truly,
Tony
ruined by blacks? no way??
That goodbye part with the fountain in the background is tear jerking after growing up in West Akron..
It's super upsetting being a former worker there seeing one of the stores I used to work in shuttered.
In My Opinion,The Rolling Acres Mall Was The Best In The Passed Years...But It's So Sad How This Famous Place Was Closed
This mall reminds me of Kansas City's long lost "Bannister Mall" Bannister mall was much larger than Rolling acres and has yet been torn down now for over 7 years. So sad that Malls in America are becoming a dying breed. They have been for the past 16 to 20 years already! wow.
Malls were such a beautiful place to vist. I miss trying on clothes personally and not being ripped off online.
actually rolling acreage was larger than banister mall by 200,000 Sq ft.
look it up!!
I remember when I was little in the 80's I loved to go to Rolling Acres mall. We lived by Chapel Hill before it had all the renovations(so I've heard I no longer live in OH). This mall reminds me of my mother who is buried in the cemetary next door. This just makes me sad.
Goodbye Rolling Acres.
The messed up thing is they knew when they built this mall in the 70s that based on population projections that this mall would fail owing to urban sprawl. As long as the investors cash out with lots of dough that is all that matters.
The mall was developed by Forest City Enterprises and opened in August 1975. In 2000, Forest City Enterprises sold the mall for $33.5 million to Bankers Trust after seeing what was going on a nearby mall. Shortly after it was sold again for $2.75 million and stores started leaving in 2003. That mysterious company did not take care of the maill and finally closing in 2008 after they couldn't afford the power
the first abandoned mall related video i saw, still amazing to watch
All of them to me are heart breaking to watch because they are just stores sure, but really as kids , malls were really a place to hang out and be yourself away from home for the first time .. it's comforting. It has nothing to do with shopping really in my opinion. It's sad - now we're all disconnected online instead of offline in malls together... :(
Only in America do we build these super structures then slowly neglect them for 40 years, let 'em sit empty for 5 or 10 years and finally knock em down.......its just sad.
+Thevinylking69 ONLY IN AMERICA? Look at China !
+TheFrozenGargon I know right, people don't seem to care that china has whole citys being built to sit empty , millions of empty apartments since the late 90s and still growing . I guess current events to some people arn't a thing :)
***** They're only relevant to some if it's anti-American.
Your right , I do seem to forget hating is what people do best since the dawn of time. I tend to want to pretend things could turn out different each generation. I don't know why I want to hold on to that hope for , seems so much like a far distant fairytale. But hey we can dream.TheFrozenGargon
The mall was developed by Forest City Enterprises and opened in August 1975. In 2000, Forest City Enterprises sold the mall for $33.5 million to Bankers Trust. Shortly after it was sold again for $2.75 million and stores started leaving in 2003. That mysterious company did not take care of the maill and finally closing in 2008 after they couldn't afford the power
Good bye my friend you were a great mall I hope you haven't lost your fan
TONS of rolling acres mall videos... THIS is the only one worth showing - so well done and kind. It's sweet. I still come back to see how it was handled... terribly of course .. so this matters.
thank you for putting this up. Excellent video. wonderful images. I am new to the Akron area, and I discovered this mall due to the JCpenney outlet. Every time I go I walk the mall and wonder about her former glory. From your video I could tell how beautiful she was. It is very sad.
I remember coming to this place alot as a kid. Every weekend, my mom would take me and my brothers here for shopping. When I heard it closed down, I was DEVASTATED. It was like losing a part of your childhood. JCPenney was opened still, but the place just shut down. Me and all I knew who went there, we cried and celebrated the mall's history before it closed for good.
I just hope that one day, someone would see the good things this mall brought to the city and maybe bring it back. History can be saved and restored. I hope the city would fix the place up and bring it back onto the map :')
LightAmari120 they are tearing it down soon
I know.
I might just be young but I'm going to get money and rebuild the mall bigger and better than ever.
So cool to see it clean and some history
it surprising such a large mall could die
Kinda wish you didn't do those filters on your video footage, because now we don't have nice clean imagery of the mall back when it was still in relatively clean condition.
man would have loved to see that fountain in operation
the end of the American consumer economy
My grandma worked at the Sears
Very cool...what years did she work there?
Kelli Cox I don't know exactly but in the 80's
StellaGirl360 gaming well then u have a BEAUTIFUL name!
I loved going to Sears with my mother.
What's even worse is how quickly this mall literally fell apart after it closed in 2008 (both from vandalism and structural issues, leaks, etc)... See the video titled "Abandoned Rolling Acres Mall, Akron 2012"...
There's another video called Abandoned Rolling Acres Mall that was posted in 2009 by Gabriel Troppe, which really provides a picture of what the mall looked like between it's closing in 2008 and 2012 and beyond where it totally fell apart. It really didn't look that bad, and could have been salvaged if the city or someone else who was interested managed to buy the building. Apparently in 2011 the owner of the mall stopped paying for security, which is probably what led to interior to be vandalized and destroyed to the extent that when the city finally managed to take over the mall, they had no choice but to tear it down.
Was even worse in 2015
this is one of the best "dead mall" videos ever.
I remember ( when visiting the arcade ) you could look down into the pit and see Christmas items set up in it during the season , ( but removed later when the lower section was finished )
Greed killed off this mall! Teen violence, especially the movie "Menace to Society" caused a near riot at the theater inside the mall. Post 911 paranoia kept many away from the malls. Internet stores claimed the mall customers in that shoppers now could shop in their birthday suits if they wished. Funny that Amazon has a facility in the exact same spot as where Rolling Acres once stood. Rolling Acres, gone but NOT forgotten.
Saw it open and saw it closed. Hard to watch this video.
This comment hurt .. I am from California and worked for a Mall called Vallco Shopping Plaza.. it was leveled... such great memories there. Thank you Sandi.
Exactly, when people don't have the extra money to spend from earning a living wage it reduces consumer demand, the vehicle which drives the economy, not tax cuts for the rich or large corporations which is a scam to say the least.
I think you've explained it really well. Buildings seem to have their own special kinds of souls made up of years of memories...In a sense, they become like old friends...
So sad.
This always used to be the place to be. I would usually be up there every weekend. After Target opened I worked there for like a year. I'd always go out and eat in the mall for lunch. It was always sad how much different it looked by that point. No one walking the halls. There were probably 5-6 stores open in the entire mall at that point.
Alladin's Castle was the name of the arcade
upstairs above the food court.
R.I.P.
Good bye rolling acres you we're good to us 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
This video brought me to tears. Rolling Acres Mall, without even knowing anything about it before, had brought me into liking dead malls and even malls in general. I wish I could have gotten to see this place in its heyday.. It was a beautiful mall. At least I am coming up to see Chapel Hill Mall this summer.. hopefully it'll be still open by late June-early July of 2019..
It is!
@@SearsCool Hey, it's been over a year now... I wasn't able to get to Akron last year, but I hope to go soon, once this crazy virus slows down. Any updates on CHM's status? Has it closed, or is it still open?
@@rebelrailz. Chapel Hill seems to be doing very badly
And it's closed for good...
@@Karmy. Ah dear... At least the CHM carousel was saved, as far as I've heard... Screw Kohan is all I have to say. He was the main contributor to the mall's downfall, because he did nothing to try and help it.
What a terrible man, only leeching money from these burnt-out malls when he could've done *so* much more with them (ex. remodeling, more attractions inside the mall, increased security, etc.) and gained a bunch more money through that.
My motto, which is perfectly fitting for this situation, is "Give, and you will receive." Kohan, among many other mall-owners, _never_ do that. I guess it's just the harsh, unfortunate reality of business nowadays...
That fountain!!
i miss the 70s and 80s...
Thank you so much for posting this, it made me cry
As a kid we spent so many weekend here, I can still remember my mom waiting for popcorn from the popcorn cart, or my dad getting ice cream at baskin Robbins. I fell in that orange fountain as a kid. We ate at York all the time andriding the elevator felt like I was something special.my dad would buy us one balloon and find some that were way up top in the high ceiling, he would send one balloon up there and wrap the string around the lostBalloon
I’m surprised that Rolling Acres even went into decline because it’s a bigger mall than both Chapel Hills and Summit Mall
I'm surprised too but sadly malls around America have become a dying breed for the past 25 years now. Bannister Mall in Kansas city was much larger than all of those malls you just mentioned it was demolished way back in 2009. It was only built in 1980. Nearly made it to 30 years but with the way that things change in certain areas it really does have a great impact.
The area it was in was in major decline, lots of empty stores and restaurants on Romig
@@Karmy. that’s true as well
@@Archmetal06 I agree. The neighborhood around Bannister Mall eventually became crime ridden and people started going elsewhere because of it.
I miss the mall😥
this is the first rolling acres video ever posted.
my parents worked here when i was 9-12 years old, now im 15 but yea. brings back alot of memories, i used to go there everyday to work with my mom, i made alot of mall friends, as in workers in stores, and other kids that go there basically everyday with their parents too. i once got up the elevator and got stuck, i went to alladin's castle arcade everyday and made very good friends with a worker there that taught me karate moves and how to play this one game, his name was Lee.
It hasn't closed up, although it's still pretty empty. It has about 1/5 of the stores in use, plus three of the five anchor stores, the food court, and I believe the theater is open. If you go there during the day it is very possible to not see anyone in sight, but it is open.
BTW there are some exterior shots; the one at 5:32 is the outside of the old Target; the one at 5:28 I'm pretty sure is from the building across the street, not the mall.
Ye,but now its all gone
So sad to see a place once full of life so lifeless.
Cool blast from the past.Have some great memories of going to Rolling Acres on the weekend during my teen years in the 70's.
Oh, how a video like this teaches us to take nothing for granted. My beloved mall, the one that was new when I was a kid in 1981... is dying now as well. I really never, ever saw such an event coming. Call me a sissy, but your video teared me up. Like the death of a friend, it is hard to see this happen.
"Rolling Acres Mall:Where value never takes a vacation."
Oh, it's taken a vacation all right-a permanant vacation!
Really good video. It really does make you sad for the mall.
i coulda sat at that fountain for hours if i were around back in the day
I did as a 5 to 12 year old
@@christopherchristopher2153 I went in there right at the begining of the end in 2001 and now I will be working at the Amazon there
Johnny Hotcakes that is great you get be apart of that great history of that Property
the music in this vid was such a good choice
My Grandmother Lives near here and when i was a child (Back When The Front Enterence was wooden)it was very packed Im going to visit there before its completely gone
Ncely done. I loved Montgomery Wards, and the mall near where I lived. It was THE place for the kids to hang out on the weekends. Its sooo sad to see these places die. The buildings may stand empty, but the memories, we all have of the good times and shopping in them will never go away.
Such a cool tribute, beautiful song... reminds me of our mall,"The Mall of Memphis" 1981 - 2003, and demolished in 2004. So sad to see malls die like this ;(
I feel a strong connection to this mall via all the videos from it I've watched, Good Up
He would bring gown 2 balloons, he was a steelworker and didn't say much, but when he got us those balloons I knew he loved us. My mom passed away andmy dad has. Alzheimer's anddoesnt remember those times so all I have left are my memories.
I wish I could go back to that time even if for one moment
Anyone here in 2024? Crazy that this video was uploaded a year before the mall actually closed
my parents worked in Nails pizzaz right behind the elevator in 3:59. I used to go to the phone store next to there to talk to the workers, there was thsi really nice lady that worked in the score right on top of the escalator, she used to give me those stuffed animal toys for free. there used to be an ice cream store around the food court too. so many memories i cant even explain it all. i think out of all the ppl here id have to say i have the most childhood memories, i went there EVERYDAY. =(
That opening sketch pix reminds me so much of the singer Bobby Sherman.His hair was just like that.Its so depressing to see the old malls abandoned.
The "Court of the Twelve Trees" looked so nice and fancy. But now it's gone 😥
Some guy just got killed from trying to steal copper wire off the roof, the place will probably just sit and rot away like everything else on Romig Rd
This is what happens when the middle class is decimated.
@LovinLife7777 I just made a comment like that on another video. I feel your pain. I was born in 1980 and I remember my elementry school dying when I was in high school, I visited it and the memories i had with my friends there were haunting.
I cant imagine the Water Tower Place, now my local mall, dying like this. It's just so sad and disturbing.
As for the maker of the video, Great job!
Sad to see these places die like this.
When a new mall is built the old one gets ignored as every one rushes to the fancy shinny place. Less customers so stores close. As the stores close the owners can no longer afford to keep the place up. As it falls apart fewer people want to shop there. Silly we keep building new stores taking up more and more land.
Think George Carlin put it best when it came to shopping
had nothing to do with a new mall, go look at the neighborhood and the "groups" of people that cling around there. stores where being stole from and started closing and it was a domino effect.
***** you're an idiot. The perception of crime is what drove people away, not actual crime.. Every single mall is full of shitty teenagers trying to shoplift. Rolling Acres had multiple problems. One of the major ones being horrible freeway access.. Go to chapel hill, the demographic is no different, but it's still open. Rolling Acres down fall has nothing to do with "liberalism".
***** you're just an idiot trying to make a sad situation political.
Gangularis
Guessing you have never been to Romig Rd. it has 2 highway exits less than a mile away allot closer than summit mall. Also "every single mall is full of shit teenagers" - thats like saying every single city is full of shit teenagers but you'll never see me moving to cleveland, same with people who said "I wont have my store in that mall"
Matthew Starcher wrong. I lived off of Romig road less than a year ago. The freeway access to rolling acres is a tragedy and a joke. Your desperate analogy is also a joke.. Comparing a city to a mall is beyond moronic.. In fact downtown Cleveland's mall is still open.. So how do you explain away that in your idiotic analogy?
thanks for sharing..so many memories in kenmore..i loved this mall!
Just so you know, the first song is "London" by the Crystal Method.
Had to search long and hard to find out what it was.
How sad.
That was a pretty damned impressive-looking mall in it's heyday.
song name of the sad song? they said the mall will be destroyed
"At least we tried" by Moby.
shammy dammy thx
Thank you for this video. We were just at Sears today...it will be closing at the end of the month. Penney's is soon going to follow suit from what I understand. There are windows in Penney's you can look through and see into the once wonderful mall. Very sad.....beautiful video!
There was video from the mall in 31.10.2008 but it was deleted, it was from the last day of operation of this mall
Yeah the person whose video it was privated it because he was tired of it being used without permission
When this video was made the mall was still open, but it closed on October 31 2008. The only stores that are left are sears and JC penny.
Hi thank you for posting this. Rolling Acres was my favorite mall and I still go there to the JC Penney Outlet from time to time. I noticed the entrance to the mall on the first floor of Penneys is not blocked I will miss it. I agree with the ad in your video that the Court of 12 Trees was a beautiful place. I can't believe what happened. Does anyone know the story? I heard a rumor someone bought the mall and raised the lease rates. Thanks for posting agin.
I miss this mall. I used to come to Rolling Acres Mall all the time. This was my favorite mall back in my childhood and teenage years. I sucks what happened with this mall. Now Chapel Hill Mall is out of business. So now, Summit Mall is now the only mall open in Akron now and they're still going strong. Carnation Mall in Alliance, Ohio was just torn down, they're building a Meijer in it's place. Shenango Valley Mall in Hermitage, Pennsylvania is now going out of business at the end of May. They're now losing their last anchor store which is JCPenney. It's gonna be torn down later this year. I miss these malls. At least the Summit Mall and the Belden Village Mall are still open as well as the Eastwood Mall in Niles, Ohio. These malls are still going strong to this day.
There're were too many malls in Ohio, in northern Ohio there were 11 or 12; Westgate, Midway, Erieview, Tower City, Euclid Square, Randall, Richmond, Beachwood, Great Northern, Southpark, and Great Lakes, now only four of the original malls are used Southpark, Great Northern, Great Lakes, and Beachwood, a handful of the stores at all three malls are not really chain stores anymore, and Great Northern, Great Lakes and Southpark have announced some sort of redevelopment and rezoning, and those three also have at least one empty corridors Great Northern's Sears wing, Southpark's Sears and Macy's wing, and Great Lake's Sears and Macy's anchors are closed and both ends have empty corridors. I think Great Lakes would be the first to close, then Great Northern or Southpark (depending on which one redevelops first, I think Great Northern will redo first then Southpark would die or stagnate), Beachwood is most likely going to outlive all the malls in Cuyahoga county.
0:20 the only pic so far that I've seen of the main entrance with the original logo... I've seen plenty of that same entrance with the later two logos but not this one...
sad to see the mall torn down my mom and I spent weekend shopping there spent my childhood at the mall so sad
Great video. Really drives home the sad feeling of what this mall has become. Sorry to see that, like other malls with fountains, an ugly fence/barrier had to be put up to keep kids from getting hurt because many parents today don't teach them to respect property. More likely they would be the first in line to sue the mall.
I never even visited this mall and this video made me a bit blue. As a child of the 70's there are few sights sadder than watching a mall - symbol of life, fun, and activity - die a horrible death like this. Just awful.
Sad as it is, this video captures this all-too-common sight across the country since the early part of this decade. Well captured.
it's so sad to see that happen. I thought that was going to happen to Bay Shore Mall on Long Island, NY. When i went there a month ago it was dead empty, but just this past saturday i saw that there was only one empty store and the mall was booming again.
-KEVIN-
just say goodbye 😞🙏 don't cry 😭
I grew up with this as our closest mall through the 90s.. even back then, half of the stores in the building were out of business, and half of the ones left were really strange stores where nobody wanted to shop (unless you want a blue velvet pimp suit--anybody remember that store??). It's not surprising it went out of business. It didn't help that for many years, it was 15-20 years outdated, and yes, as fewer people were shopping there, more people with bad intentions starting hanging around.
I just heard today in the news that the mall will be closing sometime between October 27 (This Monday) and October 31 (This Friday). The owner chose not to pay the electric bill so the moment the utility shuts off the mall's power, the mall will be closed. The 8 stores in the mall itself that are still open have been told about the power outage and closing and that they will have to either move or close. Sears and JCPenney Outlet will remain open.
I'll always miss the 'heyday' of the late 70's through the early 90's.
The business feeling was "Porsches & Perrier' ...just 'Go for it!"
We'd go to the 'upscale' malls and they were always busy..
People just enjoyed window-shopping...to see what was new.
We saw the beginning of the declines by mid 90's...
It's been downhill ever since.
Now it's depressing to see the 'closed' signs and the look on people's aces...
they also have 'closed' signs in their eyes...
This is a great video. I was a total Rolling Acres Mall rat when I was 12 and 13. Me and Barb( you know who you are-roving around, watching scary movies, buying custom made t shirts) It was great fun. I miss our mall(and I hate to shop).
I used to go there alot. Summit, Rolling Acres and Chapel Hill. Those were my old haunts.
What is the name of the music in the beginning?
Pseudo3D London by the Crystal Method
What is the metal structure at 1:15 time ? and when was it removed?
The metal structure was a fountain which was removed before 1992.
Thank you..
Nano Gaming I thought it was an elevator lol
Every time i hear the 2nd song i wanna cry cause i heard the mall was better than the other malls in the city i think it was three in total
I am loving this.
We have that at one nice swanky mall where I live.The mall is very popular but some teens got into a fight last year so they're really patrolling it more now too.
Ill never forget the way the UFCW threw all of it's ACME members under the bus during contract negotiations by allowing the company to make two contracts one the public members would see and one only the attorneys of the union would see. Guess which one gave them the ability to lay off people with seniority? I remember ACME lied about the layoffs in the paper saying that they didnt hire anyone to replace use which was total and utter bs as they hired three young kids out of high school before.
:( Now rolling acres mall is crying 😢😢😢😢😢😢 Like nooooooo I don’t want to die!!!!!!! R.I.P Rolling Acres Mall!
Oh, how sad this glorious mall in NE Ohio is failing. Think of the architectural heritage which will be lost! The elegant days of heady spending have come to an end. This is indeed a sad day for our great nation.
One of the biggest things leading to the demise of this mall is that there is no other commercial activity within walking distance, when built in 1975. Successful malls are surrounded by shopping plazas, restaurants, hotels, even in some cases airports. Another factor, which did not help,was the outsourcing of manufacturing, and other jobs, to China in the early 2000s. People in this area no longer had money to enjoy the luxuries of malls like this one.
Unions in general exist for the benefit of the bureaucrats that run them. I remember one of our managers got a job with the UFCW and as a perk he gets a free car every year and reimbursement for various "expenses". The biggest mistake they made was letting high school kids vote on the contract as most of them would be leaving anyways in a few years. So what happened? Pay tiered system was put in place which allowed targeted lay offs
such a shame. I feel we've lost something special and will never get it back. All of us saddled in debt, prices not keeping pace with income and our country gleefully speeding towards bankruptcy.
Seems it all started falling apart after the glorious 80's.
my friends and i used to go to that arcade and the music stores there,i moved out of Akron in 2000 i really hate to see that mall go belly up
Beautiful
does ANYONE know the first song playing in the video come on someones gotta know
I wish I knew
Did all my school shopping there every year but now Romig Road is dead as hell such a shame, gotta go to Fairlawn now to do anything
Walmart killed my friend, Rolling Acres Mall.
I miss you.
Their are many factors on why a mall dies, though most deal with money.
Cost of upkeep of the mall.
(bathrooms/floors don't clean themselves & repairs needed)
How much is rent?
(a mall died because the management then wanted not only normal rent, but a % of the shops profits & update the store front every 3 yrs)
Pop-culture & ease of shopping are also factors.
Sad that these once 'new centers of the community' have generally fallen out of favor.
I still perfer to shop at one over big-box or net.