Memories Are All That’s Left
I remember being 7 or 8 years old when we loaded up the car and took the drive north on Highway 63 to an area at the south end of Waterloo, really in the middle of nowhere at the time. The destination was the new shopping mall that had recently opened, with all the wonders that the early 1970s could offer.
This was dubbed Crossroads, with a Sears store opening in March of 1969, and the rest of the mall—including Penney’s and Black’s department stores—exactly a year later. The original anchors even got streets named for them leading to the mall.
It was the first fully enclosed shopping mall in Iowa; malls themselves had only been around for a decade or so at the time. Ample parking, easy access from U.S. highways…what could be better?
Nothing happens in a vacuum, of course…and once-vibrant downtown stores made the move to the mall, just as they did elsewhere. Typically, at first, businesses might have two locations, but ultimately the shiny new shopping mall won out and downtowns are still recovering to some extent.
Within the past decade, especially after the COVID shutdown, shopping takes on a whole new meaning—instead of browsing the stores, folks often surf online. It’s not at all the same, of course, but just as we loved the convenience of all stores under one roof with a mall…now we love the convenience of shopping while wearing our bedroom slippers at home.
I started thinking of this, of course, when I drove by the Crossroads mall the other day and saw the demolition underway. Heavy machinery, ripping down another place where countless memories were made. As a younger person, gathering with friends and feeling so grown up to hang out at a food court…as an older person, making visits a few times of year to get holiday gifts or birthday surprises…and even older, trying to figure out the “off times” so you could go when fewer people were in the way.
Coming next, the Boulevard at Crossroads, with housing and shopping…the latest method of developing, creating “community within a community”.
The mall had seen better days long ago, and was pretty quiet for some time. Seeing it being dismantled, though, is another sad passage.
