Roseburg Valley Mall Revisited

     As I stated in a previous blog entry, I have rarely visited the Roseburg Valley Mall in recent years. The only time I go there is to accompany my mother to PayLess Shoe Source (formerly Volume Shoes). I made such a visit to the mall this past week.
     The last time that I visited the mall for myself was when I was beginning Graduate school at the University of Oregon in 2010. I needed to get a new cell phone, after happily being without a cell phone for the first 44 years of my life; I found what I wanted at AT&T. Now, all of the cell phone stores (AT&T, Sprint, Verizon) have left the mall. Only U.S. Cellular remains.
     I was shocked this past week to discover that even more stores have left the mall, with no one taking their place. With more than half of the store fronts vacant, the mall is now a hollow shell with an occasional shopper wandering the corridors.
     One of the two jewelers at the crossroads has left (1). The bookstore that replaced Waldenbooks has left (2). So has the upper-end bookstore at the other end of the store (3). One of the few remaining original stores, Hallmark, is no longer at the mall (4). Visiting the Hallmark store to check out their latest Christmas tree ornaments had been one of the diversions that I used to make, while my mother shopped for shoes. The camera store that replaced Kit's Cameras, inside the former Taco Time space, has also departed the mall (5).
     Warm Oven Cookies at the crossroads has now changed to Warm Oven Café, reflecting the (apparent) decreasing demand for cookies. Surprisingly to me, another one of the original mall tenants, Orange Julius is still at the mall. Somehow, seeing Orange Julius at the crossroads always provides a sense of stability for me, letting me know that the mall perseveres, despite the departure of numerous businesses.
     I don't want to say "I told you so," but the Roseburg Valley Mall seems to be on a self-fulfilling prophecy of abandonment. When anchor store Sears recently left, the mall decided to replace the space with three outside-entrance businesses. The new outside façade may attract shoppers to those three businesses, but it bypasses the corridors to inside tenants. With fewer people walking from one anchor store to another, there is less demand for services from the inside merchants.
     The situation reminds me of a longtime grocery store that operated in Oakland. For decades, Bob and Lorraine Russell operated Sanitary Market. After Bob passed away, Lorraine sold the store to a family that had recently moved here from Hawaii. The new owner thought the store was quaint and she was happy to buy the store because she had never operated a grocery store before.
     Because Bob Russell, who was a butcher and had operated a meat counter at Sanitary Market, was no longer around, the new owners decided to convert the butcher cooler into a deli. The soup and sandwiches were so popular that the new owners decided to take out some coolers in the back of the store and install several tables for people to sit down.
     I watched warily as the grocery store shelves gradually went away, while the encroaching deli took over the new space. Sanitary Market had been a very small store to begin with. By removing the grocery shelves, the market became less of a grocery store with needed daily commodities, and became more of a convenience store with only a handful of needed groceries. I began to wonder if it was a grocery store or a deli? I'm not sure if the new owners even knew what direction they were going.
     As it turned out, both the deli and the grocery store went out of business. There wasn't enough room inside the cramped building to sustain both businesses. I see the same situation occurring at the Roseburg Valley Mall. Is it an indoor mall, or an outside shopping plaza? I'm not sure which direction the mall is going, and with fewer businesses now operating inside the mall, I'm not sure how much longer both an indoor mall and an outside shopping plaza can co-exist in the same space.
     I hope the Roseburg Valley Mall survives. It'd be a shame if I had to go to Dairy Queen to purchase an orange Julius in the future. Of course, now that I'm on a naturopathic diet, I sadly cannot enjoy the beverage anyway.