It is hitting hard on those who loved a shopping center that has ran for 60 years. And it includes me. And for a few other people, very hard. Almost everyone in the Beverly and Morgan Park neighborhoods knew that shopping center.
I also knew it too. But now almost everyone is hurt about what is going to happen to the old Evergreen Plaza, which was often nicknamed "The Plaza". After May 31st, this iconic shopping mall will be no more...it is going to be razed and re-built as a smaller mall, but not the old Evergreen Plaza a lot of past generations of Plaza shoppers all know (of course, "as we know it").
I remember in the 1970s when this place called Evergreen Plaza had almost all of the bells and whistles that had customers keep coming back:
1. It had almost every store you wanted to go to and most likely the place you can get your shopping done...even if it does not have "groceries" on your shopping list. You can get clothes that you want in a few clothing stores like Carson's, then eat something for a shopping break, and continue shopping for things like jewelry, or shoes, or even appliances (of course, you may remember the Montgomery Ward department store that was there for a long time in the mall) until you finish doing it. When I first came to the store, I can remember that there was a Walgreen's at one end (the north) and the Carson Pirie Scott and Co. store on the other side (the south end). The eateries (restaurants, cafes, coffee shops) were focused mainly in the middle but not too much, and some eateries are spread out along the long corridors of the mall.
2. In the 1980s, they had an arcade-game facility that was located on the south wing of the mall. I remember that on my school field-trips there. Yes, pinball machines and video games galore, and it included race games such as Pole Position.
3. I used to go to its adjacent movie-theater complex, and saw some pretty good movies there, such as "The Red Stallion" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark". A lot of other people who are movie-goers liked their free parking lot that was just outside the theater, to steer away from the heavy Western Avenue traffic.
4. The place had a double-decker parking lot facility for a time, but when the upper deck was decided to be razed in order to save money, I did not know at first that it was going to be the start of the demise of the mall.
My analysis of the reasons why Evergreen Plaza decided to end its 60-year run was this......I researched a bit through the Internet and also my knowledge of this shopping mall from going there for about several hundred times........
1. People are shopping on the Internet right now, and they are loving it so much. Yes, welcome to cyberspace--also known as online shopping. This is how they are trying to cut back on the usual expense related to shopping, which is gasoline prices. Sure, even with new sales taxes that are slapped on the Internet, and shipping and handling costs, still, the added expenses will be much less, and the ploy of "free deliveries" make Internet shopping a lot more.
2. Closing the movie theater complex that was adjacent to the mall (this happened in the 1990s) as a cost-cutting move instead caused a major loss in the mall's revenue, because the mall could not depend any more on ticket admission prices to keep up with some of the revenue expenses to run the mall.
3. The closing of the Drury Lane Martinique theater and the sprawl of a new shopping center complex just across the plaza just north on 95th street, which included the Sam's Club store, accelerated the Plaza's demise. I am guessing that in the 1970s, some people go to the Plaza to get their shopping done before they go see a theatrical performance at Drury Lane. But when Drury Lane was razed, this has an indirect effect on the Plaza I guess...forcing people to go somewhere a bit far to see a theatrical performance.
4. Then there was the housing crisis, which was worsened by the Great Recession of 2008. (You probably know about the so-called "subprime mortgages" which were partially to blame for the 2008 financial disaster.) With that, rent defaults on some of the Plaza stores went up as a result, resulting in shutdowns and/or foreclosures, and I had witnessed the consequences of that first-hand when I went to the Plaza in the new millennium....I saw empty and shut-down stores, and what used to be Plaza stores are now just steel locking, metal doors, and metal covers with no inventory or merchandise at all. This hit especially the discount businesses in the Plaza, including Payless Shoe Source, and you probably know all of this when they announce "Going Out Of Business" sales. An explosion of these "Going Out of Business" sales then spread to over half of the stores in the Plaza.....This meant a further loss of tenants, and that meant a major loss in rent revenues. And just like that, the 60-year party for the Plaza had no choice but to end. McDonald's used to be at the Plaza, and used to be its staple at the mall, but the focus on healthy eating caused McDonald's to first move to a different area where different restaurants were joined with them, and then, it was no longer there. I am guessing that the loss of McDonald's also slightly speeded up the end of the Plaza.
So the lesson here is this....I only hope that other existing shopping malls learn from the end of what we know as Evergreen Plaza, and do whatever they can to keep these malls from coming to their end just like what is going to happen to the aforementioned.
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