This long-postponed article is finally complete. I wrote this article several years ago as a timepiece to write about how the mall was doing when I took these photos. A few parts have been updated with more recent information, but I decided to leave the rest as is. The video portion was a mess, but finally cleaned up and uploaded. Youtube is not my forte, so the video is rudimentary in comparison to others.
September 2017
The mall had really gotten worse at this point. Sears, Macy's and JCPenney all left within months of each other prior to this visit.
This Dillard's was the final anchor at the mall and closed in April 2021. The mall was demolished to make room for a new Amazon warehouse which opened in June 2024. The new fulfillment warehouse is 1.4 million square feet. The mall was listed as 1.43 million square feet.
They just don't build buildings like this anymore.
The pockets of stores have gotten smaller.
The freshly closed JCPenney.
The Moonbeam generic banners.
Fun, Fashion, Dining.
One of the numerous vacant storefronts with ads to rent space at the mall.
Of course, Bath and Body Works survives.
The only restaurant left in the food court.
Going towards the former Mervyn's.
As you can see, the mall was huge.
This Mervyn's court had a very nice design.
This former Rocket Stop 101 had seen better days.
A lot of sections of the mall had roof damage and terrible attempts at fixing the stained areas.
Tables for the Rocket Stop 101.
This was the former Mervyn's entrance, you can see evidence on the sides of the sheetrock barrier.
More closed restaurants in the food court.
Chik Fil A
More ceiling damage.
This is the center court of the mall.
From this angle the mall looks like it was still doing good.
The second JCPenney entrance.
The former Macy's
The left fountain was off and had some questionable growth in the water.
The right side was still running, but the water didn't look much better.
Coming soon, lies!
The rust on the skylights looks like blood. Not a good look at all for the Sears corridor.
A peak inside of the former Sears.
Another view of the Sears court.
Just a terrible look for the mall. At this point it was obvious Moonbeam had left this mall for dead.
The Post Office stayed open for a little while after the mall closed in 2019.
A retro Gamestop, Electronics Boutique style.
So many vacancies.
90's era Foot Locker. One of my favorite store designs from that era.
This Hibbett Sports had moved from the Virginia College corridor. At this point just about every store front in that corridor was dead. The main corridor gave them a little more life.
I was surprised to see this Subway open. Subway usually closes up well before a mall gets to this point.
Another dead mall staple GNC.
The Virginia College corridor.
The old Hibbett Sports location.
A look into the closed JCPenney.
The one surprising store to have 2 locations in the mall. Journey's (earlier in the tour) and the Underground Journey's pictured here.
The Gamestop advertisement display had not been updated in quite some time. All of these advertised systems had already been replaced by the next generation at this point. This storefront was way on the other side of the mall from the actual Gamestop location near Sears.
Sure, another great merchant is coming soon. At least the sign was optimistic.
If you were looking for these stores, it would be a long walk to figure out the store is closed. Dillard's of course was the only one left at this point.
By 2017, most of the Shoe Dept. stores had been updated to the Encore format. They knew their days were numbered at the mall.
The old Waldenbooks.
Gotta love the Dillard's entrance.
I am not exactly sure what this was. Is this an old school ATM setup without the cash machine?
Looked like this store had some activity. Not sure if they were going to open up or they were finishing up after closing.
Inside of the Waldenbooks.
My favorite part of the mall. A relatively untouched Kay Bee Toys.
Inside of the Dillard's. Only the first floor was being used for the clearance center.
Tried to take a snapshot of the second floor.
Did better on the second try, but not much to see from this vantage point.
Now for the exterior of the mall.
Former auto center outside of Dillard's.
Former JCPenney/ Firestone auto center.
Former JCPenney.
Former Sears
Former Sears auto center.
Former Macy's
Former Mervyn's.
Virginia College
The main mall entrance sign.
August 2018
I recorded this video footage from the same visit as well on my Youtube channel click here. The mall was in the final death throes at this point. Surprisingly the mall lasted another year after my visit. You can see how quickly the mall emptied out by comparing the 2017 photos versus the 2018 video.
Behind the cardboard cutout of the former Kay Bee Toys.
Behind the curtain of another closed up store.
Behind the curtain of the closed off Gamestop.
The former Sears.
Both of these restaurants may or may not still have been open at this point, it was hard to tell.
Inside of the former Macy's
Grab a number, so many businesses lined up to get a space here, lol. Time was literally running out on the mall, so they were not lying.
The vintage Gamestop is gone too! The ceiling leak has gotten worse.
This finally finishes off the blog coverage of Cortana Mall. The largest mall in Louisiana that has yet to be surpassed.
Based on what the post says, there were 2 different GameStops in the mall? Because there is the one with the storefront display with outdated consoles (Wii U), and then there is the retro-looking GameStop that appears to be in a former Electronic Botique.
ReplyDeleteThe second store was actually just an advertisement for the Gamestop store near the former Sears. The consoles were already well dated by the time these photos were taken.
DeleteOh boy, another Moonbeam flame out! That ‘Got Business Savvy’ poster is quite funny, along with the ‘time running out’ posters. If anyone had business savvy, they were probably steering well clear of opening their business at this mall once Moonbeam got their hands on it. It is a shame that a once-impressive mall like this ended up being redeveloped into an Amazon warehouse of all things, but oh well. To the winner goes the spoils I suppose. At least the property didn’t sit and rot.
ReplyDeleteI dare to say that if anyone was trying to rediscover Cortana Mall in 2017, they were going to be quite disappointed. If they visited in 2018, they’d be outright bored if visiting a dead mall wasn’t interesting enough. That said, that old Godchaux’s/Dillard’s is always interesting to see. You’re right, they just don’t build interesting buildings like that anymore.
I would guess that card swipe device was probably for a kiosk vendor to process purchases given some of the text on the keypad, but I can’t say for sure. I’m not sure why’d they would leave it around like that after the vendor left, but then I guess there are many mysteries like that at dead malls. It does look like the soul food place in the food court had abandoned the place even though it looks like it is intact. The decorations seem way out of season. I know some dying malls, like the Mall of the Mainland, had some dead food court vendors where it wasn’t immediately obvious if the vendor was closed permanently or just closed for the day.
It is great to see a nearly intact Waldenbooks like that. It is interesting that the lights were still on in the magazine case. Seeing a Kay-Bee Toys like that is certainly a flashback as well.
Cortana Mall was certainly one of the more prominent malls in Louisiana and I think you gave it a good final sendoff. The video from 2018 really shows how dead this mall was when you visited it and it is pretty obvious that this mall’s time left as a mall was short. It is a bit surprising that it lasted as long as it did in that state, but at least you were able to get one last visit.
I was glad to finally get this post together and get it off of my backlog. I am not very Youtube savvy, but it was important to get this post and the video out together since Cortana is long-gone. I have been on a bit of a Louisiana kick lately. I put up my Lake Charles tower demo video on Youtube and visited Shreveport for the first time in many years. There are a couple of teaser shorts from my recent trips.
DeleteCortana was a really awesome time-capsule since they rarely covered up dead storefronts. The mall was so large and died so quickly that Mom and Pop stores mostly stayed away. A lot of chain stores lasted up until the final years and kept the mall afloat.
The video tour was pretty awesome. It was also one of the last road trips I with all of my kids together as they have since grown older and have their own lives.
Cool to see the Kay Bee Toys storefront and the Waldenbooks interior! I'm a little surprised to see the Dillard's store didn't have any markings that it was a clearance location on the mall entrance or the exterior. And yikes, you're not kidding about the skylight rust looking like blood...
ReplyDeleteIt was a real shame to see the mall go away. This place was an excellent time-capsule. If you want to see a really good video about the mall from 2019, check out Ranger Rick TV's visit.
DeleteOh I truly loved Cortana. It was my favorite spot to shop in the 80s and 90s. So many memories school clothes shopping and Christmas shopping over there.
ReplyDeleteI never got to see the glory days of Cortana. You could tell it was a really great mall back in the day. New Orleans didn't even have a mall close to the size of Cortana. Thanks for the comment!
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