Randall Park Mall
Updated October 17, 2022 | By Matthew Christopher
It’s hard to believe that Randall Park Mall, once the largest mall in the world, is no more. A massive monument to shopping that encompassed nearly 2.2 million square feet of space and had reportedly cost $175 million to build, Randall Park Mall was deemed such a colossal miscalculation that it closed after only 33 years in operation and was demolished before it would reach forty years old. Many of the places I’ve photographed are relics of different eras, but few are so close to my own. I grew up with the indoor mall at its peak popularity and spent a significant part of my youth in arcades and book stores, food courts and theaters. In many ways it wasn’t a part of someone else’s past that I was watching fade away at Randall Park Mall, but a part of my own.
Arranging permission to photograph an abandoned site is usually tremendously difficult and involves more rejection than success. When I approached Lance, one of the partners in the group that owned Randall Park Mall, to arrange access to photograph it in 2014, I was expecting that I would be turned down but he said that he had actually been hoping to have me out to the mall to document it before the demolition began. It was hard to believe my good fortune.
When I arrived in the parking lot in front of the PowerSport Institute (PSI), a branch of Ohio Technical College that had opened in Randall Park’s former JCPenney store in 2008, I was still somewhat anxious that somehow this would all turn out to be a trick of some sort. It seemed too good to be true. Lance met me in the lobby, surrounded by sparkling display motorcycles, and immediately I felt at ease. He led me through the lower level, down a carpet patterned like a road that was flanked by simulated dealerships, and out through a door into one of the mall’s service alleys, telling me the story of the mall, how Industrial Realty Group (IRG) came to own it, and what the plans for its future were. I essentially had free reign of the mall for three days.
The central court at Randall Park Mall
Located just outside of Cleveland, Ohio, the village of North Randall was mostly known for its race tracks before the Randall Park Mall was built. Called “The Saratoga of the West”, its primary industries were breeding and training horses. The site that the mall would cover was originally the Randall Park Race Track, located across the street from the Thistledown Race Track. Flamboyant Youngstown developer Edward J. DeBartolo Sr. purchased both in 1960 and moved all racing meets to the Thistledown.
DeBartolo, who served in the Army Corps of Engineers in World War II, had capitalized on the postwar shift to the suburbs by founding one of the first construction companies specializing in shopping centers that served the sprawl, although he also built hotels, condos, and office parks. At one point he owned nearly 1/10 of all malls in the United States, and by the 1990s he would be a billionnaire. As a bit of side trivia, in the late 1970s he also purchased the Pittsburgh Penguins and the San Francisco 49ers.
His plans for the future of North Randall were for a mall that would be city within a city, and would eventually include three 14-story apartments, 2 20 story office buildings, and a performing arts center in addition to the stores in the mall. He was stymied by court battles and zoning problems for over a decade, but in 1973 DeBartolo started tearing down the Randall Park Race Track and announced his plans to build the largest shopping mall in the United States on the 117 acre site, a complex that would challenge the downtown of Cleveland itself. Its close proximity to Interstate 480, which had just been built, made the trip from Cleveland to the suburbs much easier. It seemed DeBartolo couldn’t have picked a better spot.
DeBartolo had already opened a Holiday Inn on the property in 1971, and when he turned his attention to the mall’s construction, his bombastic style and love of spectacle were frequently remarked on by reporters, whom he entertained with expensive Italian dinners. Edward’s brother Frank DeBartolo had designed the mall with uniquely tiled floors and ceilings, marble columns, and a distinctive and somewhat confusing system of ramps. Over 400 workers labored to realize the vision, and Edward DeBartolo frequently flew in via a personal helicopter to supervise progress. JCPenney opened in March of 1976 and the mall itself opened a few months later on August 11, 1976 with a terrific gala; the Tommy Dorsey orchestra played in the center, actress Dina Merrill schmoozed with attendees, and according to the Cleveland Scene, 5,000 guests feasted on 1,200 pounds of shrimp, “crab and turkey, crepes filled with chicken and spinach, and trees trimmed with melon and cheese.” There were over 200 stores, five anchoring department stores (Sears, Horne’s, Higbee’s, May Company, and JCPenney), a three screen movie theater, and 9,000 parking spaces. In a town of 1,200, Randall Park Mall employed 5,000. The future seemed bright, but the cracks in the façade appeared quickly.
A flooded seating area in the abandoned Randall Park Mall
Some interior demolition had already started by the time I arrived at the mall. On the first floor near where I entered, a pile of debris nearly reached the railing of the second floor, and a lone stuffed bear in a green vest and red bowtie who had been used for holiday decorations stood pointing triumphantly upward at nothing amid a backhoe’s muddy tracks. Lance made sure to show me the remains of the General Cinema Corporation’s three theaters, which had closed in 1993 and, relegated to storage for Diamond Men’s Store, had essentially been forgotten. With an infectious excitement about the discoveries they had made, he also showed me two restaurants that had simply been blocked off with drywall when they closed; one had been sealed off like a time capsule since 1977. Lance had a personal connection to the mall, having visited many times in his youth. He led me to the remains of a shoe store that he had worked at when it was previously a clothing store called The Rivet, and marveled at how times had changed.
Some of the areas of the mall that we visited looked nearly new: the Magic Johnson Theater had opened in 1999, and aside from vandalism in the lobby, looked as though it could reopen any day. Some stores had fared much worse, with holes in the roof and shattered windows. At one point I noted a thin, barely perceptible cloud formation between the first and second floor; at another, a groundhog directly ran toward me through the empty mall, leading me to worry it might be rabid, so I loudly said “Hey buddy!”. It jumped, startled, and took off in the opposite direction. The mall was in a weird limbo. In some ways it always had been.
IRG planned to tear down the mall and turn the property into an industrial park, but the process was difficult. PSI’s building had to be left intact. Lance explained to me, “Back in the day, all the anchor tenants wanted to own their own stores and design independently. This causes a tug of war after a mall closes. You can buy the mall, but you still don’t own the property to the anchor stores, and if they’ve been bought by speculators, they’re going to want to see what your plans are before they even consider an offer.” The Sears that opened at Randall Park Mall, for example, was built during the gas crisis of 1976. Because of their concerns about having enough gas to heat the store during the winter if there was a shortage, there were tanks beneath the store and a fuel oil generator that could produce steam heat and electricity enabling it to operate “100% off the grid”. It also meant IRG had to be very careful not to damage the PowerSport Institute property in any way as they demolished the rest of the mall, which lengthened the process.
Demolition debris outside the Magic Johnson Theater entrance in the Randall Park Mall
Early on, Randall Park Mall developed a reputation for being unsafe that would lead to its downfall. Though the first year sales totaled $140 million, the murder of Larry Cook, a 23-year-old Father & Sons Shoes employee, just after Christmas in 1977 was an ominous sign. Cook had been shot in the back of the head with a .38 caliber gun and was robbed of the $800 in cash and $500 in checks he had been carrying from the day’s sales. His body was found two days later when a maintenance man spotted his feet sticking out of a snow drift in a little used section of the mall’s parking lot. In 1979, Julius Kravitz, an executive from a regional food chain, was kidnapped with his wife; while she managed to escape, he was found in a parking lot across from Randall Park Mall and died a day later from his gunshot wounds.
Beachwood Place mall opened nearby in 1978 and attracted many of the wealthier shoppers in the area, but Randall Park still managed to remain profitable despite some fierce competition. By 1984 it was the nation’s sixth largest mall, with over 170 stores and about 400,000 patrons during the holiday season. The mall’s 9,000 parking spaces and convenient access to Interstate 480 created an unanticipated problem, though: car theft. After his father-in-law’s car was stolen from Randall Park Mall, Charles Johnson invented the famous anti-theft device known as “The Club”. Stories also began to spring up about muggings and gang violence, although these may have been exaggerated. Racial tension in the area was high and the economy in the Cleveland suburbs was plummeting.
Unsupervised teens were also an issue: in 1987 eight teens were arrested when a jewelry store window was smashed and merchandise was stolen, and there was an incident where about 150 teenagers stampeded through the mall, possibly caused by a balloon popping and kids believing it was a gunshot. Gangs roved the mall and fights broke out. People frequently spoke of a race riot happening in this period, which I believe is how the stampede after the balloon incident was interpreted, as I haven’t been able to find anything corroborating the riot story in newspapers. If so, it shows how hearsay distorted perceptions of the mall and contributed to a tarnished image that worsened over the years. Unruly teenagers in malls were a nationwide concern not unique to Randall Park Mall, and the mall’s ownership instituted a short-lived policy that teenagers must be escorted by adults at all times, but the damage was done.
A maze of ramps on the second floor of the abandoned Randall Park Mall
North Randall’s economy was deteriorating as the effects of deindustrialization rippled across the Rust Belt and the mall was losing its lustre. In 1991 the mall’s Easter Bunny got into a scuffle with one of his helpers and her boyfriend, and a year later a woman sued, claiming that she was attacked by one of Santa’s helpers during an argument over her child’s photograph. In 1992 there was a large altercation outside the mall involving 200 people and fifty police officers when three security guards, two of whom were white, kicked out three Black teens.
When Edward DeBartolo Sr. died in 1994, his realty company merged with rival Simon Property Group to form Simon DeBartolo Group, who spent $20 million in 1998 on additions and renovations including the food court and the ill-fated Magic Johnson Cinema. Shortly after the cinema opened, patron Paul Robinson shot another man named Anthony Dixon in the lobby during an argument between two women in the theater. Robinson was quickly apprehended and unsuccessfully attempted suicide in his jail cell. Despite these incidents, the Village of North Randall’s Master Plan, released in 1999, mentioned Police Chief David Davis pointing to statistics showing that the mall was in fact safer than many other malls. County representatives observed in the report that if an area looks blighted, people will see it as being unsafe. When I spoke to him, Davis laughed. “It’s all about perception and how safe you think you are,” he said.
The area surrounding the mall did look blighted. The Holiday Inn in front of the mall was abandoned, the ramshackle strip of stores around Randall Park were poorly coordinated and lacked landscaping, and it was hard to access the mall via public transit. The enormous parking lots created heat islands in the summer and air pollution from the nearby interstate was a problem. Despite a few new tenants such as the indoor amusement park Jeepers, stores were struggling. Horne’s closed in 1996 and became a Burlington’s Coat Factory and JCPenney closed in 2001. Dillards had several particularly ugly incidents involving their security guards in 2002 that preceded the store’s closure. In October, an off-duty firefighter named Curtis Smith who worked as a security guard for Dillards was sentenced to 5 years in prison for accusing a 17 year old girl of shoplifting, taking her to a holding area, and ordering her to have sex with him or she would be arrested. Less than a month later Jameel Talley, an off-duty police officer working as a Dillards security guard, apprehended a man named Guy Willis for allegedly stealing a coat. According to reports, after scuffling with Willis and restraining him on the floor with his knee in his back, Talley stated that Willis was resisting arrest. He then picked Willis up and threw him head-first into the concrete floor, saying “You can’t resist now, can you?” Talley handcuffed the unconscious Willis to a chair; Willis’ collarbone was broken and protruding from his clothes and his head was bloody and rapidly swelling. Tanney reportedly lied to the emergency personnel who arrived, saying Willis had fallen out of the chair, but witnesses refuted his claims. Willis had multiple grievous wounds and died two days later from blood clots in his brain caused by the severe head trauma. Talley had been fired from a different police department two years earlier for shooting at a fleeing shoplifting suspect in Randall Park’s parking lot. He was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to three years in prison, and Willis’ family successfully sued Dillards for $2.8 million.
The remains of an Italian jewelry store in the Randall Park Mall
It’s hard to pinpoint an exact moment when a place like Randall Park Mall began to decline, but once it started sliding downhill the momentum picked up rapidly. The entire phenomenon of indoor shopping mega malls faltered relatively quickly compared to the strip malls they replaced. They lacked flexibility that smaller developments had, rebranding was much more difficult if their image suffered, and managing security always seemed to be an issue, particularly in gargantuan parking lots. If the surrounding area wasn’t well managed, or competition became too fierce, regaining a desirable status among fickle shoppers was nearly impossible. Once stores start to close, the dead zones created by their absence are difficult to hide and a clear indicator that the management is struggling. The water in the fountains is shut off, plants wilt, the paint starts chipping, the asphalt in the parking lots becomes pocked with cracks and potholes. By 2002 Simon had turned the property back to their lender, CDC Mortgage, who hired a property management company to try to figure out a way to attract customers to a mall that had over 300,000 square feet of empty stores. Consumer culture is driven by novelty. When a mall loses that initial infatuation but is too big to adapt, its very size works against it. Utilities and taxes pile up, and options dwindle.
The Magic Johnson Theater, now renamed the O Theater, had trouble attracting patrons to the dying mall. Even with half-price movie tickets, their total weekday attendance was 15 or less by 2008 and it closed in 2009. Still in relatively good condition even when I visited years later, the O Theater would be destroyed in 2016 by arson.
In 2006 Whichard Real Estate, purchased the mall for $6 million, but by 2008 they were $200,000 behind on property taxes and had multiple mortgages on the mall. The next February, Sears announced it was closing its Randall Park location, and with that the mall’s last anchor was gone. The few struggling stores inside the mall, many of which were owned by small business people doing their best to keep the mall afloat, were vacated a month later in March of 2009. The power was shut off in May, and save for the dusty sunbeams streaking through the skylights on sunny afternoons, the mall went dark.
The abandoned Magic Johnson Theater was still in fantastic shape, and looked like it could reopen with minimal work.
For a while, Randall Park Mall had been something really special. With a smile, Lance told me about how when you were a teenager and didn’t want your parents to listen to you talking on the phone, the mall was where you would go for privacy. It had been a formative part of the lives of so many residents of the Cleveland area. On my last day there, I noticed how quickly the light inside the mall disappeared when stormclouds gathered overhead. The old saying, “Everything Must Go!”, so often associated with retail sales, seemed an appropriate eulogy for the mall itself.
In its prime, Randall Park Mall’s motto had been “Much More Than Everything”, and it was so integral to North Randall’s identity that the town seal featured two shopping bags. In its abandoned state it was also emblematic of the town’s decline. Industrial Realty Group purchased the mall for $375,000 in 2014, and it was finally torn down between that year and the next. As a final bit of tragic irony, the mall was replaced by an Amazon Fulfillment Center, which operates there currently.
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