Three years after I wrote the eulogy for Springfield Mall, like the phoenix, rising from the ashes of the dead, arrived the new Springfield Mall, rechristened as Springfield Town Center.
In spite of all the criticism and sarcasm I’ve often stated when it came to the topic of Springfield Mall, it’s always because of the fact that Springfield Mall has always held a strange place in my heart. Call it nostalgia, call it reluctance to accept change, or a sentimentality of something that was a frequent setting of my childhood and teenage years, but it legitimately made me feel melancholy when I saw this place getting (partially) torn down, and effectively closed down back in 2012.
But now it’s back. And in my recent trip back up to NOVA, Huzzard took me back to our old stomping grounds, so that I could get a look at what’s become of our old stomping ground. Believe you me, I was quite excited at the idea of getting to walk around again. And much like I did in 2011, when Springfield Mall was in shambles, and barely hanging on to operational life, we took a stroll through the new place, so that I could see what all the metaphorical fuss was all about.
It should be worth mentioning that expectations going into the new place were extremely low. Frankly, I don’t really like hyping things up in my mind, or having expectations being too high, because that only sets things up for tragic failures to me, and I don’t really like feeling the disappointment of having my expectations being totally blown up.
That being said, things were already questionable from day one of the rebirth of Springfield Town Center. Prior to the closure of old Springfield Mall, the name of Springfield Town Center was established, and the initial idea of the property was that it was going to be one of those shopping centers where the store faces and walkways were all outdoor, and the anchor stores would remain in their current states. Somewhere along the line, the idea of having any part of the mall being fresh air outdoors was scrapped, and in its place, Springfield Mall was more or less remapped, given a fresh coat of paint, and renamed “Town Center,” because that sounds classier than “Mall,” and they probably wanted to get away from the name that was associated with rampant gang activity and murders.
The end result is basically the type of mall found anywhere in suburban Americana, and I wasn’t expecting my mind to be blown by this magical rebirth.
It’s funny to me that this part of the mall was rebuilt to be somewhat of the main, grand entrance to the shopping center, considering that when it was still Springfield Mall, this was the biggest dead space in the entire mall itself. In the past, this chunk of space used to be a Borders that was inaccessible from the inside of the mall, that had to be entered on the second floor outside, where patrons went down stairs/escalator to the store below. The second story was glorified marketing glass wall space on the inside of the mall, which would lead people to feel like they could tap on the wall, or if it were like Zelda, theorize that the wall could be bombed through, to find a secret store.
It’s hard to say the space is actually better utilized now, but for what it’s worth, it looks kind of neat. At the bottom of the stairs is a whole lot of floor space, that appears to be for special events, trade shows, dealerships to park cars for people to fill out bogus contact information slips with promises of winning said cars, and a whole lot of tables for the one Starbucks that’s in the center of it all, backing towards the one sole elevator, in the exact same spot as the old mall.
I know this panoramic picture sucks, but the context behind is is the fact that standing in this one particular spot yields visibility of four shoe stores, practically in a row. The significance of this is that when this place was still Springfield Mall, during it’s degeneration into closure, it developed the reputation of being that of “the black mall,” based on how the store roster was eerily accurate to Chris Rock’s comedy routine of describing of what entails of “a black mall.” Namely, the abundance of shoe stores and maternity wear, ironically two of the things that Springfield Mall had in droves, towards the end of it’s initial lifespan.
Well, based on this store listing, and the panoramic above, it doesn’t look like a whole lot has changed. On the listing, it’s apparent that shoes are still a massive player in Springfield Town Center, but if there’s a step in the right direction, I can’t recall seeing a whole lot of maternity wear, other than in department stores themselves. However, I did notice the fact that there seemed to be a lot more dedication to plus-size lingerie, or plus-size womens clothing in general. Call it a push?
One thing I noticed immediately was the fact that despite Town Center was operational, the place itself still had a massive dearth of actual stores. Much like it was when Springfield Mall was gasping its last breaths, Town Center had more than plenty of these long corridors, where there were no stores, and not even facades of future stores; just giant walls. The difference between now and then was that Town Center puts all these elaborate graphics all over these walls instead of leaving them threadbare and eerie looking in their sterile cleanliness.
However, the variety of wall graphics is limited, based on the fact that while walking around, you begin to notice the same Asian girl and dog picture, and then the interracial couple with the dude carrying shopping bags, over and over again.
Ultimately, despite the fact that Town Center is operational, they’re certainly far from being filled out. And frankly, given the fact that this is more or less basically Springfield Mall 2.0 instead of the mythical outdoor town center it was supposed to be, I wonder if it ever really will be?
One major thing to point out, and something that can’t really be captured in a picture is Springfield Town Center’s oddly unsymmetrical layout. Like, almost all other multi-story malls have floor plans that are somewhat symmetrical throughout their property; as in if there’s a Foot Locker on the first floor, there’s an H&M on the floor above it. Sure, occasionally, there might be some exceptions to the rule, like when one business needs to have the space of two stores, or the simple land itself dictates that there’s a hill underneath the floor, so the first floor is going to end here, while the second floor will continue on, sure.
But Springfield Town Center has no real excuse for having an unsymmetrical floor plan, especially considering Springfield Mall did not. Certain segments of the mall were accessible via the second floor only, and the lower level would have nothing there in conjunction. It’s not even a matter of a larger business needing the space to shut down the lower level, it’s just that there was no way to access particular areas. Conversely, there are segments of Town Center accessible via lower level, with no upper level access. The space that used to be the old food court no longer exists, and the food court is now on the upper level, and only accessible by the upper level, but only by curling around the Macy’s anchor side. It was all quite puzzling.
Speaking of the food court, here it is. Seriously, all of it. All three restaurants. A Panda Express, Chipotle, and oddly somehow “Sarku” Japan is still there. A crocodile’s tear shed for the Popeye’s that was once in this mall.
Seriously though, I’m amazed that there’s not even a single burger option, or even a taco option. And I know that Chipotle has tacos, but I’m talking about real tacos, that are hard shell, filled with bile and squirrel meat tacos.
Naturally, the walls adjacent to the first three are all filled with promises to “Shop, Dine, Whatever,” but as it stands now, Springfield Town Center’s food court has just three options. Sure, there are sit-down options at some of the other entrances, but given the fact that they’re all on the price point of Maggiano’s, it’s kind of tale of two extremes when it comes time to satiate the hunger.
Strangely enough, one thing that hasn’t changed from the old days is the fact that Springfield Town Center still feels somewhat justified to have two Auntie Anne’s preztel stores in it. Don’t get me wrong, Auntie Anne’s pretzels are pretty tasty, but it just seems silly to me that the place still has two of them in the mall, when it’s clearly strapped for food options in general. Naturally, the photos don’t really support my argument, given that they’re both filled with people wanting their soft pretzels, but it’s still puzzling to me why identical pretzel stands are there when something like an Orange Julius or some other kind of snack business could be at one of them instead.
The significance of the picture is that it used to once be the anime store where I worked for a few years when I was a teenager, and ultimately, where I spent an ungodly amount of time hanging out at with the friends I made when I was there. It also used to be one of the two Time Out arcades that once existed in the mall at a time when arcades actually existed in general. And I remember when it was Time Out, spamming M. Bison’s Psycho Crusher in Street Fighter II: Champion Edition, when it did basically infinite chip damage, and learning that there were fighting game enthusiasts who really frowned upon those who utilized throws, and me not caring as long as I won and kept riding my 50 cents, playing Marvel vs. Capcom.
More crocodile tears for this space.
The funny thing is that despite the fact that Springfield Town Center is up and running, isn’t necessarily the same creepy death trap it felt like back when it was actively dying, and actually has stores that people might actually want to go into, it’s still basically Springfield Mall anyway.
The store roster and layout have been reconfigured, but the basic skeletal structure of the place is still the same as it was back in the day, and it’s anchored by three stores, two of which are the original JcPenney and Macy’s that are from those olden times as well.
A coat of fresh paint, changing the tiling, and putting fancy wall graphics all over the numerous endless stretches of walls can only hide so much.
The most important thing about Springfield Town Center is that as much as the mall itself can be superficially changed to try and mask and pull wool over peoples’ eyes, absolutely nothing can be done to change the fact that it exists where it exists. In spite of the name change, and superficial updating, Springfield Town Center still exists in the part of Springfield that’s basically unsavory. The Great Wall of Springfield (the Franconia Road bypass) can’t block out the Hispanic gangs that mostly reside in the neighborhood on the other side of it, and it’s still, for better or worse conveniently located at the end of the Metro blue line, meaning the same “factor” that killed Springfield Mall will still be in play if such wanted to kill Springfield Town Center.
That is, if it’s not too busy at the moment sieging Tyson’s Corner currently, alternatively.
None of this is made more prevalent than by the fact that cops at Springfield Town Center are still wearing bulletproof vests while on patrol.
What’s amusing to me is that back in 2011, I took a picture of this hallway, and photoshopped Heather Mason and other Silent Hill 3 monsters in it, to accurately reflect the comparison to the start of SH3.
We found ourselves back in this hallway while on a bathroom break, and I took this “updated” photo. The funny thing is that I didn’t cross-reference the old one for positioning and angle, yet I somehow managed to almost perfectly take it from the same spot I did four years prior. Amazingly, the absolute only thing that has changed about this one particular section of the mall is the wall on the left has been painted red. The poster on the wall is astoundingly the exact same poster from four years ago, and aside from the influx of color, it’s pretty much exactly how it was left when I photoshopped Silent Hill into it.
If anything at all, this hallway in Macy’s is a perfect metaphor to what Springfield Town Center is. A little bit of paint and superficial changing isn’t really fully capable of hiding the horror that truly lies beneath.
