West Hill Mall 2015 update from different 2 trips to the mall. Not much has changed since the last visit except for the closing of the Foot Locker store. The Foot Locker was originally near the center of the mall, but moved before that section of the mall was closed off.
Here are some interior shots of the mall. These are of much better quality than my previous posts at the mall. The interior of the mall still has mostly local stores.
The mall map
This photo was taken just before the Foot Locker abruptly closed.
Looking from the Palais Royal court you can see all the way across the mall to the JCPenney entrance. The retail space is only about 1/3 of the mall. The DPS and county uses the remaining former 2/3 of retail space.
As you can see from the photos, the mall is very clean and well maintained.
The former Foot Locker store.
The former Zales is now a cut through to the bathrooms.
Now for the exterior of the mall.
This mall sign is located at the back corner of the property.
The far side of the mall is used for various county services.
Palais Royal
The lone mall entrance
Here are some closeups of the current and former department store anchors.
Thanks for the photos of this mall. This mall looks a little bit more modern than other small town malls in the region, but there are retro spots like the JCPenney mall entrance. The mall does appears to be well maintained. The mall seems to be struggling for the most part, but at least they have some local tenants. The Lee Baron store is funny, it sounds like a Chrysler LeBaron car.
ReplyDeleteIt is very well maintained. Since there is not much retail space in the mall, local stores are now the majority. A lot of new retail is opening up just down the freeway from the mall so it is surprising that the mall did not do well.
DeleteI don't mean to derail this thread and turn it into an auto industry discussion, but on the subject of the Chrysler LeBaron, I have to ask any and all of you a question... didn't the LeBaron seem more like it should have been a Dodge than have the Chrysler name? The LeBaron was marketed as the "entry-level" Chrysler of the early 1990s but still seemed so much more like it should have been in the Dodge lineup in my opinion. It seemed too downscale to be worthy of the Chrysler name.
ReplyDeleteAlso the Plymouth Roadrunner of the 60's seemed more like a Dodge to me. Same with the Plymouth Duster of the early 90's. And same with the Eagle Vision, but Dodge sold the Intrepid which was identical to the Vision. The styling on the 1993-1997 Intrepid was awful in my opinion though. Dodge should have made the Vision instead as the Vision seemed too upscale to be an Eagle. I thought it was odd that Chrysler Corporation sold that same car as three different models: Chrysler Concorde, Dodge Intrepid, Eagle Vision. The Concorde was clearly the most luxurious of the three, but the difference between the Intrepid and Vision in terms of prestige was never really clear.
I am not much of a car person, maybe one of the readers can add to the discussion.
DeleteI think Chrysler had used the LeBaron name on and off since the early 20th century. That's probably why they recycled that name again in the 1970s/1980s. Most Chrysler products at the time were not much different from Plymouth and Dodge models. Chrysler was the luxury brand, Plymouth the mainstream brand more or less, and Dodge the performance brand. The truth is, like GM and Ford brands, there wasn't a ton of differences between the models.
DeleteEagle seemed to exist mostly as a vestige of AMC and Renault after Chrysler brought out AMC. I guess Chrysler wanted to keep AMC going for a while without using the AMC name. The Renault based Eagle Premier/Dodge Monaco is a known flop in the market place that probably would have been an AMC model if AMC still existed. The Vision was kind of marketed as the Euro-sport model with the Intrepid being the mainstream/American sport model and the Concorde being the luxury model. I'd say that the Vision was more of a luxury model than the Intrepid, but there really wasn't much separating the two. Supposedly the Chrysler 300M (not to be confused with the current 300) was supposed to be the successor to the Vision.
There really wasn't any reason for Eagle to exist when Jeep/Eagle-AMC dealers were combined with Chrysler/Plymouth dealers and their models didn't sell well (I think all of them were available as other Chrysler brand models or Mitsubishi models) so the Eagle name went away. Plymouth went away not too much longer and now Chrysler does not have too many models under either the Dodge or Chrysler names so at least one of those names could go away soon too.
Long story short, Chrysler was and continues to be a pretty ineptly run company IMO. They have no idea what they're doing with their brands and models. The company probably would have gone away a long time ago if it wasn't for Jeep and the Caravan. Of course, they're eliminating the Caravan now (at least under that name) so they don't even have that. Well, anyway, I hope that helped. I know it's far from retail related, but I guess Lee Baron inspires such things!
Thanks for all the info. I found it strange that the Chrysler, Plymouth, and Dodge brands all used the pentastar logo on their vehicles. That made it nearly impossible to tell which car was which brand when looking at the front of one of those cars because the front end would have the pentastar but no text.
DeleteDodge started phasing out the pentastar starting with model year 1993, but the Chrysler brand waited until 1995, and Plymouth waited until 1996. The pentastar still hung around on steering wheels, keys, and elsewhere until around 2001 when Plymouth was phased out. Strangely the 1995 Plymouth Neon had a special pentastar designed just for it. It was a pentastar surrounded by the same circle with the Plymouth name that would surround the Plymouth sailboat logo which debuted in 1996.
Is Foot Locker not performing well? They pretty much vanished in Western Kansas too closing all 4 of their stores.
ReplyDeleteFoot Locker closed over a 100 under performing stores over the past year. Does Western Kansas have Hibbett Sports? Hibbett has been expanding into many areas taking market share away from Foot Locker.
DeleteThis Penney's is on the closure list.
ReplyDeleteIt is certainly a huge blow for the mall. Palais Royal pulled out so the mall will now be anchorless. I guess this opens up the rest of the mall up for takeover by the Government offices. Hopefully I will have a chance to drop by before they close.
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