Less-than-Grand Avenue Mall

We stop at the downtown Grand Avenue Mall. The mall has become a tomb.

Built while I was in college, the mall received a lot of local media buzz. Connecting Boston Store and Gimbels under a single roof, the new mall would leave the historical architecture of the Plankinton Arcade intact. The developers wanted the new mall to evoke the days of Grand Avenue, before the street was renamed Wisconsin Avenue. Back in those days, women in bustles with umbrellas strolled with their beaus or husbands down Grand Avenue in their Sunday best.

The current Grand Avenue failed to achieve the planned grandeur. Despite a downtown nightlife resurgence in the late 1980s that continues today, the mall never drew large numbers of downtown shoppers. People go downtown for shows at the remodeled Riverside Theater, the historic Pabst Theater or the Performing Arts Center (now the Marcus center). People eat at Mo’s—A Place for Steaks, drink at Elsa’s on the Park and other watering holes along Water Street or Jefferson Street. But shop? Why shop downtown?

Grand Avenue Mall never housed great stores, not funky boutiques like on Brady Street or upscale shops like in Mequon. Grand Avenue could never compete with spacious suburban malls like Mayfair and Southridge.

A few years ago, large lower-end stores—TJ Maxx, Old Navy, Linens N Things-- moved in, encroaching on spaces designed as walkways. TJ Maxx and Linens were like open-air markets, in a bad sense.

So much of the mall is shuttered now. We walk through, horrified and sad. Stores that you never thought would go away like The Confectioner are gone. Many facades are covered with mirrors to disguise the abandonment.