something very old, something very new: part 2

Footsteps echo in the empty hallways of the Eden Mall in Eden, North Carolina, just two days after Christmas, 2002. Eden, once a thriving textile mill town in northern North Carolina, is struggling like many towns where the principal industry has either closed or moved out. On the second shopping day after Christmas, a day when most shopping malls are packed, fewer than 50 cars could be found in the parking lot of Eden Mall. (Doug Thompson / Capitol Hill Blue)

check out part one

The Rise and Fall of Eden Mall
The year was 1980. Jimmy Carter was president; energy conservation was a buzzword, disco was dying, and filmmaker George Lucas was putting the finishing touches on “The Empire Strikes Back.”

In retail, America’s shopping attention was focused on the enclosed mall. And, to be sure, there were a lot of them being built in this year. Larger cities had one or more large malls by the late ‘70s, leading to market saturation, so developers began to focus on small cities and towns to keep the momentum going.

Any prime intersection near a prosperous town could become a mall at any time in this period, and the small city of Eden, North Carolina, located just south of the Virginia border, had both a measure of prosperity (aided by the recent construction of a Miller Brewing Co. plant, along with numerous production divisions of the Fieldcrest-Cannon Corporation) and a large parcel of land north of town at the intersection of Van Buren and Meadow Roads that was overdue for development.

Eden Mall opened at this intersection in 1980 and was an instant hit. The anchor stores were Belk and Globman’s department stores and Kmart, and they headlined a roster of nearly 40 retailers. Also included was a freestanding Big Star supermarket located adjacent to Kmart

For several years, the nondescript small-town mall was successful. Eden’s economy was doing well and most of the comparably-sized cities surrounding Eden didn’t have malls yet. North Carolina’s liberal ‘blue laws’ made a trip to Eden Mall the only way to shop on Sunday for residents in towns nearby in Virginia, where most stores still closed that day.

Things changed for the worse by the mall’s tenth anniversary. By 1990, both neighboring Danville and Martinsville, Virginia had large new malls with Sunday shopping. Miller Brewing began shifting production jobs out of the area, and Fieldcrest-Cannon began its long ascent into bankruptcy with major job cuts locally.

Anchor stores Globman’s and Kmart were on their last legs, with Globman’s closing in 1992 after years of corporate decline and Kmart closing in 1995 after a new Wal-Mart opened nearby and took its business. While Peebles quickly replaced Globman’s and Belk trudged on largely unscathed, Eden Mall went into steep decline. National retailers gave way to mom and pop stores which precipitously closed down.

Eden Mall never fell into physical decay, but its halls are decidedly empty today. Fewer than 10 stores occupy the building and only a handful enough are doing well enough to be considered successful. While most malls barricaded their old storefronts, many Eden Mall stores were simply locked and left, creating a strange presentation of nearly three decades of store design, frozen in time.

part three coming soon