A Visit to Century III Mall - CLOSED
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- Опубліковано 7 вер 2024
- UPDATE: C-III is now officially closed. Moonbeam has finally killed it. Completely, and utterly.
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The great mall of Pennsylvania. 3 Floors of vacant lease-able space. Dead, on its last legs, and headlined by a management firm that just doesn't care. I drove 5 hours to West Virginia to stay somewhere. And then I drove another 2 and a half hours into Pennsylvania just to see this mall, and when I saw security, I had to break out the backup plan. I was going to either leave with footage, or be buried beneath that mall I hope you guys enjoy this mall as much as I did.
That's me working in Spencers. haha.
Adam Daley:: Do they still let Spencer's employees do piercings there?
No, not anymore. We don't even sell the at home sets.
Doomie Grunt I think I do remember, and no worries! It's just refreshing to see people from all over the place have interest in the mall. Shame how the owners just let it go
As a Pittsburgh native born the year before this mall opened, this video breaks my heart a little. I remember when Century III was the place to be for your shopping needs. It was our first stop for school clothes shopping, our main destination when the holidays rolled around. I used to love the milkshakes at Pappan's. I lived for my trips through Kay-Bee Toys, my browsing runs through the shelves at Waldenbooks, B. Dalton's, and the various comics dealers that made their way through the mall. Spencer Gifts was always good for a cheap laugh, and if you had more highbrow tastes, there was Art Explosion on the second floor. I still have a bunch of old music cassettes, and more than a few came from Camelot Music in the mall. My mother used to love Wicks 'N Sticks, and I think my dad still has a letter opener she got him for their 25th anniversary, engraved at Things Remembered. In its prime, it was honestly a wonderful place. There's a great video on here called "Century III Mall Memories" that's a nice stroll down memory lane for those so inclined. Thanks for a bittersweet look at the place.
This gave me some flashbacks to Oak Hollow. This mall has the same amount of stores Oak Hollow did when I went as a child.
NO mall has gotten into my psyche as hardcore as Century III. I'm so glad I got to recently visit the place before whatever happens in June, happens. I watched this video a year or so ago when it was posted and didn't comment, but now, on the eve of its demise, I feel like I have to commend you on filming and documenting this space for the future. My heart sank earlier this year when I heard it was closing, but as fate would have it, I ended up having to go to Pittsburgh for a Rick Astley concert in the middle of April, and had previously befriended UA-camr Wallieb26 via YT and a common Facebook group we are on, and incorporated several meetups with him into my weeklong vacation to Pittsburgh. One of the highlights of the entire trip was touring C3 with him and seeing this mall masterpiece for myself. I am so glad I got to see this place firsthand, because no videos or photos do the place justice, although they were more than enough to inspire me to absolutely place it on my bucket list of places to see before they're gone. By the way, Doomie, I saw on your FB page where you got RickRolled in this place. I would have sh*t myself had that happened the night I was there, lol. God, I am gonna miss knowing C3 is open, in whatever sad state its final days have been. My heart goes out to all those who made precious memories in this place, and now I have my own memories there with my dear friend Wallie. I know this place will haunt my dreams. That ache of things that are no more will eventually set in and my heart will remember your footage, the videos of others, and my own dear memory of the one time I was able to fully appreciate this space. Thank you for adding to the historic documentation of C3. You YT guys are doing God's work by braving security and travelling great distances in some cases to capture these places before, in many cases, they are reduced to rubble.
Gotta say, all the videos I've seen of C3 are making me very seriously thinking about a late May trip to the Pittsburgh area to visit this mall! I'm freaked out by the fact security is supposedly very tough here(and as youtuber Sal described this in his video, as gestapo-like), but I suspect I'd find a way to get at least(discretely) some photos off before getting kicked out of this mall in a very worse case scenario(and only has happened to me twice, ever over all my years of photographing dead malls). We'll see if it does work for me to get here in late May, or not.
Great video! So sad. I remember going there as a kid when i visited family in Pittsburgh. It was always very busy, very noisy...always an event going on. Now it is super dead, even has a wing of the mall walled off.
How sad....looks like it was once an amazing place....
This mall was absolutely massive in its day...an indoor city
It's freaky that in just 13 months after you visited this mall, and when I visited on Wednesday May 30, 2018, HOW MUCH deader Century III got! At least back in April 2017 it had a few stores left then, vs. when I visited right after Rainbow had closed. There were 2 sections they weren't allowing anyone to walk into, when I visited. One was between Hot Topic and JCPenney on the 2nd floor, with Penney's closing down their 2nd floor interior mall entrance. Other area closed, was just past the food court up to where the dead Sears store used to be. 1st floor was still open into that Penney's, plus one outside entrance(to the north, near the hallway leading up to Century III Nails and where a restaurant of some sort(not sure what) used to be. All their other outside entrances were open, though.
Back to Hot Topic, they were in the process of doing a store closing sale when I visited that day. Weren't sure the last day they were going to be open, but a Hot Topic employee told me the whole story(as she had heard) as to what lead to the sheriff's sale. Basically it had to do with Sears getting annoyed at Moonbeam over something in regards to taxes, then filing suit over that in court. And from what I remember(learned this after my visit, and getting back home in Chicago), the sheriff's sale was delayed from early June to early July. Finally as much as I heard the stories about security here, I didn't have any problems photographing this mall. I just made an immediate choice to not photograph right by the food court, since security was watching that area like a hawk. For whatever reason they never walked south of where they stood in the food court area, and I made the decision to take all my pics on the other side of where Verizon and Bath and Body Works were.
Thanks for bringing us an update on this mall. The mall looks worse than the last time I saw it. The owners of this mall also own Cortana Mall in Baton Rouge. Ever since they took over, Sears, Macys, and JCPenney have closed or are in the process of closing. The mall had been slowly declining over the years and is probably past the point of no return now. This company does not seem to have a good track record with redeveloping malls.
Blog Man Gwinnett Place, Columbia Place, Moonbeam is very questionable and is in controversy about doing nothing with Gwinnett Place
Great video. Love watching abandon/ dead mall videos
This makes me seriously sad. This mall was a part of my childhood. To see it in this state is depressing.
big empty building. should make a nice FEMA camp. to the left we have our torture devices, to the right, plastic fema boxes.
Update: JCPenney was the final store to close on October 26th, 2020.
UPDATE: It appears the West Mifflin township has become so fed up with Moonbeam's incompetence that they have recently listed the mall up for a sheriff's sale. In response, news sites are tossing around dates for when the mall may potentially close. For now, we mall walkers hold our breaths, and wait...
Doomie Grunt it's up for sale due to millions in unpaid taxes, w mifflin has nothing to do with it
Sadly nothing is left but Penny’s and Dick’s. The rest is closed off. The last 3 remaining tenants were given 30 days to vacate like a week and a half ago
This was built on the slag dump from the Steel Mills., not coal mines. :)
I remember as a child when they would dump the slag the hill would glow red, you could see it for miles. :)
What's behind the walled off section?
that's so zombies cant get in.
Behind the walled off section, is a dead wing of Century III mall. Ace's Adventures lucked out and found a way into that dead walled off wing of C3, in a video: ua-cam.com/video/5Xr9Z5ANZzM/v-deo.html
these malls remind me of Dawn of the Dead. only zombies in there.
Doomie:: Have you used the new glasses yet? How was the upload quality?
Do you use Google Glass, or did you have some other kind of undercover camera you used to film after the security first noticed you? That's my only worry if I film inside malls, that for all I know you might have one of those odd run-ins with an annoying Paul(-a) Blart-like guard. Luckily, I've rarely ever ran into confrontations on taking pics inside malls, as long as I've done it with a cell phone(in my pre-smartphone days, till 2013) or a smartphone camera.
Yeah, I totally see not wanting to risk it any further, when a guard noticed that! When I explored Lincoln Mall in Matteson, IL(pre-closing), I ran into a moment where I had to white lie to a guard that I was doing a long text messaging conversation on my(pre-smartphone, I only finally got a smartphone in late 2013) cell phone. But after that moment, and since I was comfortable that I'd photographed all the parts of the mall I wanted to that day, I chose to leave rather than risk it any further. Totally know what you mean about not wanting to play with fire!
That isn't a bad idea that you had an Excelvan camera, and used it after that point. Probably hid it like inside a pocket or a jacket, with an opening? What model was the Excelvan camera, that you have? Maybe I should look into buying something like that, for the future.
Gotcha. Thanks for explaining how you do film, inside these malls! I'm sure you probably only could se the VIXIA HF R70, at the deader malls(i.e. Penrose(or whatever it's called) in Reidsville, NC, etc).
Aviva: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 5/7/13
Didn’t Aldc preform here