Tag: Metrocenter | Edward Jensen

Prior to its closing next week, I thought I’d make one final trip to Metrocenter to see it before the lights turn off for good June 30. I grew up close to this mall and visited it more than I probably care to admit in the 1990s. I wrote an appreciation essay on Metrocenter earlier this week, which I invite you to read first before viewing the photos.

One of the main entrances to the mall building

I never appreciated it until now, but the former Robinson’s / Macy’s store (now a U-Haul?) has a definite New Formalism aesthetic to it.

A detached Walmart replaced the former Broadway in 2016-2017

The former JCPenney (and before that, Dillard’s, Joske’s, and Rhodes) is now a self-storage. Note the symmetry of the building (the black glass is/was an elevator)

From the north, the Sears was a box on top of a plinth

This sticker was still on the door of the Sears

Now we go inside. You can see elements of the original architecture but also the postmodern nonsense they put on top of it

Another interior shot. This is the east-west corridor

Even the security guards are mailing it in

The Dillard’s clearance outlet is now only accessible from the outside, but the atrium still shows some of the original 1973 architecture

Short-term leases are available – act today, we’re gone tomorrow!

And, finally, this sad balloon sums it all up.

The big Phoenix news story over the past weekend is that the closure was announced of Metrocenter (1973-2020), the struggling shopping center in north-central Phoenix. The mall will close at the end of June after 47 years of operation.

Although this news is not surprising to hear, it is still a bit of a shock to hear the finality of it. The mall opened in 1973 with a record-setting five anchor store positions and 1.4 million square feet of retail space on two floors. For those who came of age in Phoenix in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, it was the place to see and be seen. It reached new appreciation in the 1980s when Metrocenter stood in for a mall in southern California in the 1989 science fiction film, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

Continue reading “Metrocenter (1973-2020), an appreciation”