find your way
Image by Nicholas Eckhart
Here is the mall directory of the Upper Valley Mall. Notice how there is only one entrance into the mall that does not involve walking through a store. The Upper Valley Mall opened in 1971. It appears that this mall may have had new flooring installed and new seating areas added at one time while remaining otherwise unchanged. For a mall built in the 1970s to still be doing fine with minimal updates is pretty fascinating. I am not saying this mall should get a major modernization but instead that this mall in unique in the sense that it did not take part in the trends since the early 1970s that most successful older malls took part of to "evolve". Despite this mall going greatly unaltered for so long, it was fairly busy on my visit and there did not appear to be many vacancies. The Upper Valley Mall was developed by the Edward J. DeBartolo Corporation. Now the mall is part of Simon Malls; I know Simon fairly well and if they think a mall does not have much potential they will sell it. Simon also typically appears adament about updating their malls every so often or at least to a point where the malls have the standard food court, modernized lighting, and a more contemporary color scheme. I am shocked that this mall has survived so intactly under Simon and has not been butchered for a new food court, a newer cinema complex, and exterior updates.
FYI: most other malls I have been to that have not been greatly updated from the 1960s or 1970s are closed down altogether now or have a massive amount of vacancies with dead anchor stores and many empty smaller stores inside.
Directory – Upper Valley Mall – 1475 Upper Valley Pike – Springfield, Ohio
