Farewell Friend

In November 2000, I lost a friend to cancer. His death wasn’t a shock. I had known about his cancer. We had spoken on the phone and I had promised that in the next two weeks, I was going to drive out and see him at his house. I never made that trip. Daily activities, schedule conflicts, work, or self-indulgence took precedence and I never made it to see that friend before he died. I regret this everyday of my life.

Now I wont begin to compare the tragic death of a friend to the closing of a mall, one is clearly worse than the other… With that said, I knew about City Center’s final week and made similar plans to visit accordingly… I never made that trip either… Nine years later, I let the same pattern repeat itself and the mall closed without my final visit… Sadly, I don’t know if I will ever think twice again about this…

I know, for the vast majority of this city, last Thursday’s final hours for the downtown complex passed without notice. Most people filed into and out of work, they likely passed City Center on foot or in their vehicles, they may even have glanced toward the structure… but I doubt they said to themselves, this is it. This is the last day we could, if we were inclined, set foot in this building, before it is turned into a park…

Therein lies the depressing fact and why I very much wanted to walk through the building one last time… A mammoth structure has closed… It’s future is no future… It will be torn down and turned into a park, which will do nothing to improve this city… And the worst part is that it’s nineteen years old… Can you imagine condemning a college freshman, who granted had seen better days, but condemning them prior to affording them the chance to reinvent themselves?

This is the fate of City Center… Politicians can gloss over this… They can say we need a more open look for downtown… They can say that they could not redevelop the structure… That a casino isn’t wanted and an office renovation was impractical… And I might not be able to respond to this… Except, they are building a park and ringing it with offices, shops, and condos… They have conceded shops don’t work downtown; the fact is no one is buying downtown, and more people are working in the suburbs… But Mayor Coleman has his dream project and City Center must come down….

And this is why I wanted one last walk through the three stories, almost ten-acre complex… Yes, it is a virtual ghost town, and it was filled with items for auction, and I haven’t lived in the city for all nineteen years, so its not like I could remember what store was where or I had a sentimental connection, but the fact is, that this building, conceived in 1984, opened in 1989, and the destination for most of Columbus for a decade, meant something and I wanted to soak that in…

I wanted to walk in past the vacant anchor store, which still bears the insignia of Marshall Field’s… I wanted to walk past the ground floor entrance restaurant and multiple shops, before stopping to stare at the now silent big screen television, where the once broadcast soap operas to attract crowds… I wanted to walk stare toward the glass elevators, where crowds scattered in 1994, as shots rang out and a fifteen year old died…

I wanted to stare the empty Jacobsen’s and Macy’s, whose closures or relocations were the first and eventual ultimate signs of trouble for the complex… I wanted to walk up the escalator, which once blazed a path to the skywalk, which no longer stands… I wanted to walk past the Radio Shack and the Walden Books, who were the two last chain stores to bolt, as the mall dropped below twenty tenants…

And I wanted to wander which of the now vacant spaces used to hold the Limited and Victoria’s Secret, before the city and Les Wexner could not agree on whatever they could not agree on and he; with his clothing millions reshaped this city and City Center’s future forever… I can just imagine the conversation between Columbus officials and Wexner, which would have ended with the phrase “What are you going to do Les, build your own mall?”

One can point to any number of factors or pose any number of suppositions, but the truth is Easton Town Center is not casually responsible for City Center’s demise, they fired the fatal shot… The ridiculous opening of Tuttle Mall, by the City Center’s developers, was harmful… And the opening of Polaris Fashion Place, signaled the end… But, nothing had a more crippling, more damaging effect, than Easton, which took Bexley and eastern crowds, which formally flocked to the complex and spirited them away forever…

And now the mall is gone forever… It’s destiny is no destiny and in ten years, it will be a footnote and in twenty years a history lesson… City Center, is in this way, like the friend I mentioned at the outset… I never got to say a proper good-bye to him or to the mall… I regret that in his case… I will remember that in the mall’s case…