GASTONIA, N.C. (Queen City News) — In the ’80s and early 2000s, shopping malls were in their heyday, popular spots for people of all ages to gather, shop and wander.
Now those stores are closing at an alarming rate.
While it is predicted that around 90% of shopping malls will close within the next decade, some are undergoing major transformations to survive.
From the air, Eastridge Mall is huge: It occupies more than 900,000 square feet in Gastonia — bigger than most malls in the country.
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“People come from all over,” East Ridge Mall General Manager Steven Stout said.
Stout has overseen the mall’s operations for more than four years, including the behind-the-scenes paperwork, stores and layout of the mall, which has changed dramatically in recent years.
“I can’t tell you how many national retail tenants have left since I’ve been here. It’s bankruptcy, bankruptcy, bankruptcy,” Stout said.
Like many malls not located in big cities or affluent areas, East Ridge has lost most of its national retailers, and the three-story building once filled with stores and pedestrians now has more boarded-up entrances than open ones.
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“It would be a dark day if we had to rely purely on retail,” Stout said.
This is a fictional dark day that Stout doesn’t want to let happen. Instead, he wants to initiate major change.
“To survive we need to attract different types of tenants, especially non-retail tenants, and we’ve been fortunate to be able to do that,” he said.
Interspersed among the kiosks and clothing stores are non-traditional tenants that wouldn’t have been found in a mall even a decade ago.
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It is home to the DMV, a church, the Gaston County Republican Party headquarters, and a CDL driving school.
“The facility had a ‘just casual’, urban clothing store feel,” said Clarissa Rankin, owner of R&K Training Academy.
Located on the first floor of the mall, Rankin is converting a former retail building into a truck driving school.
“This will be our wall of honor. We will have various placards of students who have been admitted and graduated,” Rankin told a Queen City News reporter as she showed him around her space.
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But without trucks, there would be no truck driving school.
“I told you guys you had to get back to work,” Rankin said with a laugh. “Good luck, Darrell. You can do it.”
There are more than 4,200 parking spaces in the East Ridge area, and Rankin transformed the entire parking space into lesson plans.
“Yes, a vacant parking lot has been transformed into this beautiful academy,” she said.
It’s a vision painted by a shopping mall general manager: to fill empty spaces with businesses that may have seemed out of place years ago.
“It’s the instinct of the beast right now to survive,” Stout said.
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Stout isn’t done with his plans to reconstruct the mall.
By the end of the summer, he plans to close the first floor to pedestrian traffic and relocate about 15 residents to the second floor, essentially turning a three-story building into one.
“We think consolidating all the traffic on the upper floors will be very beneficial for our tenants,” Stout said.
Shopping mall operators across the country are being forced to choose between adapting or joining a growing list of closures.
Stout said he’s optimistic East Ridge isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
“The bottom line is, work hard, not work smart,” he said.
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