The decline of the small town shopping mall

Palatka Mall opened to great fanfare in 1981. Today, a walk inside exposes a post apocalyptic scene of a small town enclosed mall's struggle to stay relevant into the 21st century.

1. Palatka Mall’s massive parking lot sits largely empty on a Saturday afternoon.

2. The main center court entrance to Palatka Mall.

3. A movie theatre operates in a space that was originally the mall’s food court in 1981.

4. The VA Palatka Outpatient Clinic takes up a portion of the former Belk-Hudson department store.

5. The former Belk-Hudson mall entrance. Belk closed their Palatka Mall department store in 1992. The former store has been subdivided into big box spaces that are not directly connected to the mall.

6. Several storefronts inside the Belk-Hudson wing of the mall have been converted into either government use or the back wall of the movie theater.

7. JCPenney is no longer accessible to the mall.

8. As a result, the storefronts in the JCPenney wing of the shopping center remain empty.

9. With little reason for pedestrians to be there, mall management has decided there’s no reason to run the center court’s water fountain.

10. Dollar General plans to add nearly 2,000 stores to its fleet by 2017. Despite being in the midst of the nationalwide expansion push, Palatka Mall’s Dollar General recently closed.

Article by Ennis Davis, AICP. Contact Ennis at edavis@moderncities.com