Rolling Acres Mall

In November 2016 I went back to Ohio for the first time in about ten years. My brother and I spent some time roaming about the place we'd called home nearly 17 years prior and we made one stop there that was necessary: Rolling Acres Mall located in Akron, Ohio.

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Since we left in 2001, this mall has crumbled into a state of urban decay and disrepair. The mall started its decline in the mid-1990's and from then on anchor stores dropped from the mall like diseased limbs. No longer the buzzing retail center, the mall closed on October 31, 2008 after being open since 1975.

Throughout the 90's, my family spent so much time at Rolling Acres. It was the place to be on weekends, the parking lot was so crowded there was barely a spot left. I remember going there to pick out my new school clothes every year and going to get our pictures taken on Santa's lap every Christmas. It's where my brother thought Santa actually lived (which has become a 
family joke). 

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It was a beautiful mall complete with an amazing indoor fountain framed by light streaming in through the skylights. There were indoor plants and a glass elevator.

I remember roaming the halls with my Mom and brother just going to browse the stores, kill time and get out of the heat during Summer and arguing with my Mom I didn't need my coat to walk to to the door in Winter. (I never won.) 

My grandma would have me spend the night and then we'd do a 'girls day' and one time in particular she took me to the mall where I picked out a beautiful snowflake crystal pendant which I still have today. If we went anywhere during the 90's, it was usually this mall.

Rolling Acres Mall Santa Photo 1990, me age 4.

I'd heard and seen the pictures of the mall online for the last few years as it has since become a symbol of the post-consumerism apocalyptic wasteland.

It was the first episode titled "Ghost Mall" of a series on VICELAND called Abandoned. It was depressing to see the neglect and ruined state of a place we spent so much time. The mall has also been a subject for YouTube urban explorer, Dan Bell, and he did an interesting walkthrough of the mall you can see here. 

Besides my fond memories of this mall, it does have some darker moments in its history. A child was crushed to death by the elevator and two women were found murdered in the woods near the mall in 1986. The mall was also the spot where a victim of the Craigslist killer was buried in a shallow grave and a man was electrocuted while attempting to rob the mall of copper wire. I have heard there has been a body or two found hanging on trees in the woods by the mall as well.

Since our visit, the mall has been demolished and the land belongs to the city of Akron. As of this writing this morning, there are rumors that Amazon has plans to develop the land into a fulfillment center. As much as I feel like Amazon is taking over the world, it would be better economically for that area to develop the land into something usable.

I wasn't sure what to go with here so I went with sarcasm.

I'm glad we went when we did because, little did we know, we were seeing the mall in its last few moments. According to the Akron Beacon Journal, demolition officially began in October that year. We didn't see any signs of demolition as it was probably being deconstructed inside.

I guess I can start a list now of things from my past that have been demolished: 1) Elementary School 2) Favorite Mall. It's weird to think about those things no longer existing but that's what time does, it moves on. And even thought I left Ohio about 20 years ago, I expected things to be right where I left them but that's not what happens. The potholes in the road were right where I left them though, their roads are rough af.

So what ultimately caused this mall's demise? Crime, economic depression, the changing landscape of the retail space. This trend is not going away and I feel like in the next ten years we are going to see many more Rolling Acres Malls in America. 

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The Purge

When we moved from Washington back to Virginia last month, it gave me an opportunity to purge a lot of childhood things I thought I would keep forever. I had a big box full of old journals, bad teenage poems full of angst, every note I've ever received from middle through high school, and odd trinkets from my past that I kept for some reason. 

I've been wondering lately why I am keeping these things because I just watched one of my friends purge her life- her home, her belongings and move into a really nice RV to live a simpler and more pared down life. It's very inspiring and has prompted me into thinking about the things that I really need in life. While I'm not prepared to do anything quite so drastic, it motivated me to get rid of some things that I had been feeling tied down to. 

My younger self had put these items in a box because I thought that these puzzle pieces of my old life would be interesting to me as an adult. "When I'm thirty, it's going to be so fun to read this!"

As I sorted through the box I easily threw out a gallon ziplock bag full of notes- I no longer cared. I found a notebook my (then) best friend in high school had passed back and forth for months and tossed it out. We are no longer friends and thinking of her is more painful than happily nostalgic. It was a more difficult choice to get rid of my old journals because they had been prized possessions for a while like completed novels that I lined up on my bookshelf. I flipped through them and they were just full of childhood crushes and other embarrassing things that I'd be mortified for anyone to read and that I'd like to forget. 

The only journals I've bothered to keep are the ones I've written as an adult as they offer more introspection and soul-searching than the schoolgirl musings of the past. I also had to keep my very first journal from fourth grade that was a purple spiral-bound notebook with Winnie the Pooh smiling on the cover in which I wrote about who offended me in class and the dead bird my brother and I found. Very sensational stuff. 

I kept three small shoeboxes full of mementos from Sophomore through Senior year because I decorated them and they had some interesting stuff in it like my Prom corsage and my learner's permit.

It felt good to be free of so many things that tied me down and that embarrassed me to know they existed (those poems...man, so angsty and emo). I mostly kept the things that I would be happy to reflect on and show someone else. 

But why did I keep so many things? I can only guess that it was because I was afraid of growing up and of forgetting everything. It was hard for me then to imagine what 30 year old Ashley would be doing, what kind of person she would be, and what she would care about. My younger self thought that these memories were worth holding onto when they were such a minute snapshot of life. 

I guess that's a part of growing up though, right? Knowing what's important to hold onto and what you can let go.