As of Nov. 1 the mall will be closing it's doors and casting another hole in my childhood. A place that I remember being once full of life and not thriving but not being dead either. A place I grew up walking through. RIP to a legend
Thanks for filming this and the other Martinsburg Mall videos! Even though our mall didn’t have everything the other two did, I still miss having it here in town.
I worked Security at this mall for over 13 years ( from 1994 to 2007) and Crown American was taking a loss on the mall even then. Most of the empty spaces didnt even have a concrete floors. Tax wright off the whole time.
I have a lot of fond memories of this mall when I was a kid. Lots of businesses in there I loved: Waldenbooks, K. B. Toys, the Pocket Change Arcade. I remember my dad use to give me a roll of quarters and a few bucks, leave me at the arcade while he got groceries at Wal-Mart. I'd kill an hour or so at the arcade and then get lunch at the Diner, Chinese Wok, or the hot dog place. Had one of my first dates at the mini-golf place. But most of the businesses closed up years before the Mall itself was torn down. I know, at one point, a local college bought up some of the empty spaces and were going to put class rooms there but then the college lost its accreditation, I believe. By the end, a lot of really sleazy in-door flea market style places had moved in. The fye was really the only interesting place at all in the Martinsburg Mall by the time it closed down for good. People who worked there told me that the mall owners charged outrageous rent. Part of me will miss this place but the mall itself stopped being good a long time ago.
I still remember the day the mall opened up. Before the mall, there was Berkeley Plaza (still operating but much less business) on the other side of town which was the hot spot on a Friday nights with Acme grocery located where the fitness place is now. Then beside that was Video Invasion, Peoples Drug Store, McCroy's 5 & Dime, then Jewelry Box, then JC Penney with Allegheny Optical on other side of plaza and the IRS building which was burned down. Most of these businesses moved to the Martinsburg Mall when it opened. The walled up section around 7:00 minutes was the 50's Ice cream parlor shop and to the right of the little diner beside that used to be Pocket Change arcade.
I remember this mall from when I attended Shepard College (now University) way back in 1997. It was starting to slow down even back then. The Martinsburg region is sandwiched between already established retail centers of Winchester, VA and Hagerstown, MD, which offers better and more amenities. Sad to hear it's closing though.
It was surprising to see an actual open Bon Ton, FYE and mini golf course and arcade! Thanks for capturing this place before it went away. What a loss.
The malls that are making a go of it have added selling experience based business such as bowling, indoor golf and the like to the traditional retail experience.
Crown American was enamored at one time with developing malls at Interstate Highway exits, Interstate 81 in particular. They built malls in Martinsburg, Chambersburg, and Frackville along the I-81 corridor thinking that the highway would extend their reach and viability. Today, all three malls are dying fast and now we know Martinsburg will be the first to close its doors for good. Too bad. :(
That's the bad thing about these malls, thirty, forty years ago, before everyone had internet and Amazon existed, people thought things would always stay that way and the malls were good ideas. Then the internet happened, Amazon was founded, and soon everyone's shopping habits changed, which contributed greatly to the deaths of a lot of malls. In some areas, malls even became targets of gang violence, making things even worse. On top of that, it's hard for struggling malls to attract new stores when they want to charge an arm and a leg for rent.
Wow, I can't believe those exercise videos were from 1991! How times change. When Radio Shack can't make it that is the sign of a dead mall. That is so odd for JCP to block itself off. I can't figure out why if Walmart is being blamed on the whole, for the death of malls, well, here's one in conjunction with a mall and it's not thriving. I could not think of a better combo to be near the value and variety of the mega big box store, and the smaller but different in a good way smaller stores all under one roof. I guess the fact that there were so many unfilled spaces from the beginning was not a good start. Thanks for another good video.
There is a walmart connected to that mall, at the former Sears end, and it actually had a mall entrance originally, but it was closed off fairly early on, mid-90's I guess. There are other malls 25 miles north and south of M-burg on I-81 in Winchester VA and Hagerstown MD,and another a little further north in Chambersburg PA. I wonder how those are doing. This mall always had too much competition. How many Zales and Bath & Body works does an area need?
Nation Decay I Really Loved The Martinsburg Mall In Martinsburg, WV The One Thing I Loved About The Martinsburg Mall Was The Par For The Course Indoor Golf Resort Cause The Par For The Course Indoor Golf Resort Had An Arcade In That Mini Golf Course And Also The Time Out Arcade And Also I Kept Seeing These Pinball Arcade Games At The Par For The Course Indoor Golf Resort Pinball Arcade Games Called The Getaway: High Speed II And Gilligan’s Island The Pinball Arcade Game The Getaway: High Speed II Is The Arcade Game My Mom & My Brother Played At The Par For The Course Indoor Golf Resort At The Martinsburg Mall In Martinsburg, WV
i notice they dont clean the arcade when you aimed the camera at the celing in the arade i notice a big thick layer of dust on the ac vent i was liek ewww
This bloody fucking blows that so much of the mall culture is dying and that retail in general is being wiped out. :( Great video, sad subject matter. I am not originally from the US but this is so depressing.
maybe if the mall would have offered more affordable rent, shit woulda been different....... rent was insane, noway a business 'in this area' could make it with the rates they wanted to charge......
Ronnie Cook yea it's rediculous. All of the current owners want to blame the community for it when it was all they're fault. You can't tell me that if we had the things the other malls had people wouldn't come. They also tried to tell me rent was cheap... bullshit. They're making a mistake and ruining a perfectly good building by turning it into yet another strip mall that people can't enjoy in the winter. I used to just enjoy walking around the mall and now it's not possible
I still go into this mall mostly for FYE and Bath and body works, and the Indian store that was there, not now. but if it weren't for the jerks yelling insults as you walk in I'd probably go more often.
it's not my camera. the video was horribly unstabalized. like I'm talking make you turn off the video and get dizzy bad. I let the youtube settings fix it and it's a drastic improvment
Radio Shack must be failing as a whole company. One was next to the grocery store and it closed and another in the mall closed. Both in the same town. And my town isn't a poor place. We have very high end stores here and super expensive condos that seem to be doing well. We still have Macys and they plan to close 100 store nation-wide. We still have sears here.. but I see their point of sale systems are outdated. JC Penny closed in this mall a little while ago and the space is planned for a high end grocery store. A fee towns over stll has a JC Penny so I go there sometimes. Obama just blew $680 billion dollars on another disastrous health care bill so inflation will now increase more. Also pension funds are in big trouble right now so state governments will be increasing taxes to cover the mess.. which will make the economy a little worse. You see the price of gold on the way up again and steadioy going up this week. That trend will likely continue as the economy becomes more unstable and inflation and taxes keep increasing. Trump has a huge mess to fix. So few thr next year or two thr retail sector will continue to take big hits. Except for the high end markets which basically do not compete on price points but have shops in relatively wealthy areas. Tiffanies jewelery stores and Nieman Markus for example.
As of Nov. 1 the mall will be closing it's doors and casting another hole in my childhood. A place that I remember being once full of life and not thriving but not being dead either. A place I grew up walking through. RIP to a legend
Why's the video so shaky?
+Identified Patient it's an improvement from what it was
+Nation of Decay Letting UA-cam "fix" your video made it worse, actually.
+Identified Patient no the old one was so shaky it was enough to make you dizzy
The last time I shopped there the Sears was still open, I was looking at tires in the auto center. The years are flyin' by.
Thanks for filming this and the other Martinsburg Mall videos! Even though our mall didn’t have everything the other two did, I still miss having it here in town.
I worked Security at this mall for over 13 years ( from 1994 to 2007) and Crown American was taking a loss on the mall even then. Most of the empty spaces didnt even have a concrete floors. Tax wright off the whole time.
I have a lot of fond memories of this mall when I was a kid. Lots of businesses in there I loved: Waldenbooks, K. B. Toys, the Pocket Change Arcade. I remember my dad use to give me a roll of quarters and a few bucks, leave me at the arcade while he got groceries at Wal-Mart. I'd kill an hour or so at the arcade and then get lunch at the Diner, Chinese Wok, or the hot dog place. Had one of my first dates at the mini-golf place. But most of the businesses closed up years before the Mall itself was torn down. I know, at one point, a local college bought up some of the empty spaces and were going to put class rooms there but then the college lost its accreditation, I believe. By the end, a lot of really sleazy in-door flea market style places had moved in. The fye was really the only interesting place at all in the Martinsburg Mall by the time it closed down for good. People who worked there told me that the mall owners charged outrageous rent. Part of me will miss this place but the mall itself stopped being good a long time ago.
I still remember the day the mall opened up. Before the mall, there was Berkeley Plaza (still operating but much less business) on the other side of town which was the hot spot on a Friday nights with Acme grocery located where the fitness place is now. Then beside that was Video Invasion, Peoples Drug Store, McCroy's 5 & Dime, then Jewelry Box, then JC Penney with Allegheny Optical on other side of plaza and the IRS building which was burned down. Most of these businesses moved to the Martinsburg Mall when it opened. The walled up section around 7:00 minutes was the 50's Ice cream parlor shop and to the right of the little diner beside that used to be Pocket Change arcade.
I remember this mall from when I attended Shepard College (now University) way back in 1997. It was starting to slow down even back then. The Martinsburg region is sandwiched between already established retail centers of Winchester, VA and Hagerstown, MD, which offers better and more amenities. Sad to hear it's closing though.
I love the way you give a history of the place as you go through.
I enjoyed the vid.
It was surprising to see an actual open Bon Ton, FYE and mini golf course and arcade! Thanks for capturing this place before it went away. What a loss.
The malls that are making a go of it have added selling experience based business such as bowling, indoor golf and the like to the traditional retail experience.
Crown American was enamored at one time with developing malls at Interstate Highway exits, Interstate 81 in particular. They built malls in Martinsburg, Chambersburg, and Frackville along the I-81 corridor thinking that the highway would extend their reach and viability. Today, all three malls are dying fast and now we know Martinsburg will be the first to close its doors for good. Too bad. :(
This mall went downhill when they closed off going from Wal-Mart into the mall
Our mall is a distant memory now 😢
That's a shame! Same thing happened in my town to the mall I visited weekly for years!
It is the same with our mall here.....just a few stores remaining.....it is so sad.
country treasures was originally a new york and company. other original stores include Maurices, B. Moss, PACSUN, KB toys, Pretzel Time Cinnabon, etc.
only one month until closing and almost all stores are gone already
Opening with Walmart as an anchor to your mall is like the scene with Bruce the shark in Finding Nemo.
Someone needs to tell Walmart malls are friends, not food.
That's the bad thing about these malls, thirty, forty years ago, before everyone had internet and Amazon existed, people thought things would always stay that way and the malls were good ideas. Then the internet happened, Amazon was founded, and soon everyone's shopping habits changed, which contributed greatly to the deaths of a lot of malls. In some areas, malls even became targets of gang violence, making things even worse.
On top of that, it's hard for struggling malls to attract new stores when they want to charge an arm and a leg for rent.
at least there is a bath and body works. no dead mall is complete without one.
That Store with some yellow on it was a PacSun, If you already knew that, I just wanted to let you know just in case you forgotten
Wow, I can't believe those exercise videos were from 1991! How times change. When Radio Shack can't make it that is the sign of a dead mall. That is so odd for JCP to block itself off. I can't figure out why if Walmart is being blamed on the whole, for the death of malls, well, here's one in conjunction with a mall and it's not thriving. I could not think of a better combo to be near the value and variety of the mega big box store, and the smaller but different in a good way smaller stores all under one roof. I guess the fact that there were so many unfilled spaces from the beginning was not a good start. Thanks for another good video.
Walmart didn't kill the mall, online shopping did.
There is a walmart connected to that mall, at the former Sears end, and it actually had a mall entrance originally, but it was closed off fairly early on, mid-90's I guess. There are other malls 25 miles north and south of M-burg on I-81 in Winchester VA and Hagerstown MD,and another a little further north in Chambersburg PA. I wonder how those are doing. This mall always had too much competition. How many Zales and Bath & Body works does an area need?
yea Wal-Mart access to the mall was closed due to people stealing and/or expansion for the Grocery dept they added later.
I know how u feel my favorite mall was closed too. very sad
Stay tuned for a new video on this place! I will be filming on the very last day of the mall being open.
Nation Decay
I Really Loved
The Martinsburg Mall
In
Martinsburg, WV
The One
Thing I Loved About
The Martinsburg Mall
Was The
Par For The Course
Indoor Golf Resort
Cause The
Par For The Course
Indoor Golf Resort
Had An
Arcade In That
Mini Golf Course
And Also
The Time Out Arcade
And Also
I Kept
Seeing These
Pinball
Arcade Games
At The
Par For The Course
Indoor Golf Resort
Pinball Arcade
Games Called
The Getaway:
High Speed II
And
Gilligan’s Island
The Pinball Arcade
Game
The Getaway:
High Speed II
Is The Arcade
Game
My Mom
&
My Brother Played
At The
Par For The Course
Indoor Golf Resort
At The
Martinsburg Mall
In
Martinsburg, WV
i notice they dont clean the arcade when you aimed the camera at the celing in the arade i notice a big thick layer of dust on the ac vent i was liek ewww
This bloody fucking blows that so much of the mall culture is dying and that retail in general is being wiped out. :(
Great video, sad subject matter. I am not originally from the US but this is so depressing.
Focus on the negative in Martinsburg focus on the positive
Someone should make shirt saying "R.I.P Martinsburg Mall 1991-2016"
maybe if the mall would have offered more affordable rent, shit woulda been different....... rent was insane, noway a business 'in this area' could make it with the rates they wanted to charge......
Ronnie Cook yea it's rediculous. All of the current owners want to blame the community for it when it was all they're fault. You can't tell me that if we had the things the other malls had people wouldn't come. They also tried to tell me rent was cheap... bullshit. They're making a mistake and ruining a perfectly good building by turning it into yet another strip mall that people can't enjoy in the winter. I used to just enjoy walking around the mall and now it's not possible
Jaden i like your style of videos , i subscirbed to you
I still go into this mall mostly for FYE and Bath and body works, and the Indian store that was there, not now. but if it weren't for the jerks yelling insults as you walk in I'd probably go more often.
thats sad
Very beautiful Mall... I don't understand why they are dying...
+Curacao Life [Urban Explorations] me either it's a shame
Nation of Decay Yeah..
Curacao Life [Urban Explorations] online shopping that's why.
Donald Myers Ok, thanks :)
Better research would have made this much more compelling.
How very sad
yes it is
the mall i notice in some areas bad design? using those cheap floursents lights 0-0
dude something is wrong with your camera
it's not my camera. the video was horribly unstabalized. like I'm talking make you turn off the video and get dizzy bad. I let the youtube settings fix it and it's a drastic improvment
Radio Shack must be failing as a whole company. One was next to the grocery store and it closed and another in the mall closed. Both in the same town. And my town isn't a poor place. We have very high end stores here and super expensive condos that seem to be doing well. We still have Macys and they plan to close 100 store nation-wide. We still have sears here.. but I see their point of sale systems are outdated. JC Penny closed in this mall a little while ago and the space is planned for a high end grocery store. A fee towns over stll has a JC Penny so I go there sometimes. Obama just blew $680 billion dollars on another disastrous health care bill so inflation will now increase more. Also pension funds are in big trouble right now so state governments will be increasing taxes to cover the mess.. which will make the economy a little worse. You see the price of gold on the way up again and steadioy going up this week. That trend will likely continue as the economy becomes more unstable and inflation and taxes keep increasing. Trump has a huge mess to fix. So few thr next year or two thr retail sector will continue to take big hits. Except for the high end markets which basically do not compete on price points but have shops in relatively wealthy areas. Tiffanies jewelery stores and Nieman Markus for example.
the economic is bad in the united estates
blame online shopping lol
Gday, love the channel! we make exploring abandoned videos but are located in australia, feel free to check us out!