Malls bite the dust

Two of the area's shopping malls are on the way out. Blue Ridge Mall, once a great mall, is completely gone. A shopping center anchored with a WalMart supercenter is replacing it, I think it will probably open early next year. They have the old mall down and cleared now.

Mission Mall is being torn down as well, to make room for what looks to be a nice combo of shopping, offices and condos/lofts/apartments.

There are a couple of other malls just hanging on by a thread- Bannister Mall, almost nothing is left there and the surrounding shopping centers are also about done for. Metro North mall is not a whole lot better. The surrounding area is still okay, but the mall has very little left in it. That basically leaves Indpendece Center and Oak Park Mall is the major malls left in the metro, along with the Great Plains mall. Most of the new shopping centers in the metro are open air shopping centers, not malls.