Fall
In early 1993, with attendance declining, Kirven's went out of business leaving one of the mall's three primary stores vacant and beginning a slow but steady process of store closings in the rear wing of the building. The entire rear wing was eventually closed-off, and the few remaining tenants were relocated to the front of the mall.
The mall soon began to fall into a state of disrepair, and the facility began to be perceived as a place of crime and violence among local residents, further reducing attendance. J. C. Penney relocated to Peachtree Mall the following year, leaving the mall with only a single anchor store. In 1999, the city of Columbus bought the facility, with the exception of the Sears building, and soon demolished the structure. Sears remained open as a stand-alone store, its former mall entrance walled-in, until the mid-2000s when a new Sears store opened in Columbus Park Crossing in North Columbus.
The site is now home to the Columbus Public Library which opened January 3, 2005. In January 2008, the Sears building was demolished to make room for a new Muscogee County School District administration building. This event put an end to the final chapter of the mall's history.
Read more about this topic: Columbus Square Mall
Famous quotes containing the word fall:
“Your mock saint who stands in a niche is not a woman if she have not suffered, still less a woman if she have not sinned. Fall at the feet of your idol as you wish, but drag her down to your level after that—the only level she should ever reach, that of your heart.”
—Emmuska, Baroness Orczy (1865–1947)
“Oh when to apprize
Is to mesmerize,
To see fall down, the Column of Gold,
Into the commonest ash.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
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—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)