on the cover / By Heidi Walters

Mall Town

The Bayshore Mall might look depleted, but hope still lingers in its halls

(Sept. 24, 2009)  Last Wednesday, before the mall’s official 10 a.m. opening time, the early morning mall walkers had already been churning up the white tiles for several hours as they did laps tracing the mall’s inside perimeter.

The big gate to Kohl’s was rolled up, revealing a bright interior and a sea of boxes swarmed by freshly trained workers and their eager managers. Some stretched noisy packaging tape around massive blocks of boxed inventory, then carted them down to the overflow room in an empty storefront elsewhere in the mall. Others unpacked merchandise and settled it onto shelves. Clipboards and lists and directions and bustle.

The Bayshore Mall as seen from up on the bluff at Fort Humboldt. Photo by Heidi Walters

GALLERY >

But you couldn’t take a picture: Corporate doesn’t allow its store to be photographed until everything’s shipshape and perfect, said store manager Jucille Barnes. The Kohl’s photo op wouldn’t be until opening day, Sept. 27 — this Sunday. And not only shall perfection and light then reign in this dark corner of the mall, but elsewhere inside the sprawling indoor behemoth at 3300 Broadway the other merchants will heave a huge sigh of relief and look suddenly 10 years younger.

Since January, when the bankrupt and nationally defunct Mervyns pulled out, the mall’s whole west end has withered, with small stores going dark and the Hometown Buffet left as a lone beacon of life. True, in June, The Treasure Trove lit up the space opposite Hometown — a spot Baa Baa Sheepskins fled after Mervyns closed. (Baa Baa resettled in Old Town Eureka, where co-owner Angela Lyons said last week things are going swimmingly.)

But otherwise there’s nothing between the gaping darkness where the big anchor once was and the still-breathing part of the mall, except for blank faux walls fronted by soda machines, empty storefronts and the currently shuttered Eureka Police Department annex.

Out in the rest of the mall are more dark gaps where shops — some of them major chain stores, like The Gap — have been yanked out like rotten teeth. And there’s the massive hole left by long-time anchor Gottschalks, which went bankrupt, quit the business and skedaddled this year, just like Mervyns. In all, there are about 75 open stores and 20 or so empty spaces. And when you consider that General Growth Properties — which owns most of the Bayshore real estate (not the Gottschalks space, nor Kohl’s’) and 199 other malls — is itself in the throes of bankruptcy, well, all might very well seem lost for this bulky fortress of consumerism. As a penned sign in the back window of a car in the mall’s parking lot said last week, perhaps “The End Is Nigh.”

Except for that breath of fresh air brought in by the new Kohl’s. Unless it’s just a dying gasp. Yeah, maybe we should level the old gal and build something new, chic, open-air and modern for shoppers. Or put in a park — my god, the bay and a could-be-lovely but now trash-beriddled marsh are right there. Or, alternatively, install some low-income housing and social services.

What do we want? Do we need the mall? Do we use it? Do we want it to stay the same? And what about that church? You know, Calvary Chapel, across from the Boot Barn and Gianni and next door to the Dollar Tree. Is the mall going in some bold new direction?

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