Without any anchors, these stores won't last long at all. Dillard's scaling down to one floor is NOT a good sign. Expect to see it closed during the next round of Dillard's closings. I say by the end of 2009, the mall will be history, and that is a liberal estimate.

Yes. Notice that I said that I think it will last a LITTLE longer. I know that these stores aren't enough to hold the mall alone. Saddening, but oh well.

And SoonerFashion Mall is one of the places I was talking about that I have to drive to now. It has a decent selection of stores. pssshft. With all of those stores catering to the young, and wealthy teens of South OKC, Moore, and Norman, it'll do good for a long time I suspect. And with the closing of Crossroads, expect some traffic being directed towards SoonerFashion.

I work there every now and then and tonight there were probably 50 buckets scattered about the center court catching leaks from the rain.

When is the last time it was actually called Sooner Fashion? 10 years ago?

How about shawnee mall...??

Around here, people still call it Sooner Fashion mall. I say it all the time. Mom does too. All I know, it is still the name of it.

I call it sooner fashion all the time, what else are we suppose to call it.. THE MALL? or Sooner which is a road that doesnt even go by that area. I can understant if the mall was Called SOONERS but just sooner doesnt make sense

I was there last summer for a bit and it reminded me of Heritage Park Mall 5 years ago.

I remember way back when I took Drivers Ed and we drove out to Shawnee and stopped at the mall. We hanged around for about an hour and it was a nice place. I accidently told the instructor that the mall is better than Crossroads. Afterwards, probably months or years later, I realize that I meant to say it is better than Heritage Park. lol

"Sooner Fashion" was dropped about eight years back, now it's just called Sooner Mall. That's the official name but anywho...

The problems with Crossroads are numerous .....
1. Poor management - They decided to cater to the teenage trouble makers thinking these jobless punks would have dollars to spend in the mall. Guess what? Jobless trouble makers don't spend money in the mall. They make trouble and run off the middle aged hard working citizens who actually had money to spend. So where do I go when I need to visit the mall... Sooner Mall or Quail Springs.

2. They never developed a useful food court. Restaurants spread out all over the dang mall make it difficult if you and your friend or spouse want different things to eat. The food court at all the other malls are much more appealing.
3. They didn't keep the mall looking fresh and clean. The entire place is outdated. The exterior is just plain ugly. The parking lot is ugly and there isn't any landscape.
4. They didn't meet their customer's needs. I've been told several times that the mall management was downright adversarial with the tenants.

I would be happy if they tore it down.
Kinda wordy for my first post.

The Heritage Park Mall space conversion for Life Church makes one wonder... could Life Church use the whole mall? Look at how much space they use for 2 Edmond campuses alone. Convert the center court into an amphitheater, one anchor to offices, another anchor to a youth center, etc. Inline spaces could become classrooms - enough for Sunday school, topical lectures and a full scale K-8 Life School. Isn't that the next logical step anyway?

I'm sorry if I missed it, but where did the info come from that Dillard's was scaling to one floor?

If so, that's terribly bad. Especially since Steve and Barry's (I think that's the name of it) is pretty much toast since they agreed to close so many stores the other day.

LC.tv isn't interested in any more "mega" structures. The "franchise" model such as the South OKC, NW OKC, and most of the other campus locations. About a $1-$2 million dollar building including remodeling is the structure that works for LC. The church has been successful in reaching more people in more places by having a smaller building instead of less but larger buildings. Basically look at it as spiritual ROI, number of times they can rotate a seat (6 services per campus) or 1-2 service for 1-2 gigantic campuses? They can have different functions throughout the week, thus getting more use out of every square foot of space, etc.

See the below link for metrics:

- LifeChurch.tv : swerve

A few months ago I was doing some research at the courthouse in Shawnee, and I stopped at their mall to see if the Dillard's had an item that I could not find at Sooner Mall or Penn Square. I wouldn't compare it to Crossroads, but to me the mall had the feeling of being on the decline. The interior needed updating, and the selection of stores was very poor, although I didn't see a huge number of vacancies. Both the Dillards and especially the JCPenney were small and had a limited selection. I was glad I did not make a special trip out there.

The Norman mall does a lot of business and is probably not going anywhere soon, regardless of what happens a couple of miles north. The only problem I have with the Norman mall is that these days it is dominated by stores that appeal to teens and very young adults. When The Limited left, it was replaced by Forever 21. That's the trend in that mall. Not surprisingly, the clientele is now dominated by teens, though not the troublemaking kind. I rarely have a reason to go there anymore, especially now that the Moore JCPenney has opened. It is much larger and vastly superior to the one in Norman.

I went to Quail a couple of years ago during the Christmas season and haven't been back since. I think I saw a drug transaction in the parking lot. The interior was getting run down, and the clientele had gone way downhill. Surprising since that's the closest mall for the Edmond community.

Haven't been to Crossroads in quite some time. I did check out Steve & Barry's when Sarah Jessica Parker's clothing line came out. Didn't understand the appeal of that store. The clothing was cheap, but it looked to be cheaply made. I'd rather spend a few more dollars on clothing that will survive a few washings.

As I see it, Penn Square is the only decent mall left in this area, but the hassles of going there aren't worth it for me. I rarely shop at malls anymore.

I think if crossroads does close they should just let it stand as is for memories as you drive by and not desecrate it or tear it down. I wish someone would buy it and return it to the way it was in the 70's when it first opened same style decor shops etc, I think that would be awesome. Wicks and Sticks Regal Shoes, Mc Donalds upstars with avacodo green seats the works!! I would do this if i had the money to buy the mall

"Franchise" Church. Sheesh.

A church call itself a franchise? I would avoid that place.

I was sad to see Pets Unlimited gone from Crossroads. Why did they shut down? Did they move? I liked going there, looking around, visiting the bunnies. It was the only place with steady supply of bunnies.

Yes they moved into Walnut square shopping center off I-240 and Penn they were open there for 5 or 6 months and then went out of business.

What cause them to lose business?

That was a poor decision to move.

This slow, agonizing death for Crossroads is really, really painful to watch for someone who remembers when it was first built and opened. It was awesome. It was a first of its kind in Oklahoma, and its unique location along two major interstates made it all the more compelling.

My son advised me the other day that Subway is gone, and Sbarro's has checked it in as well.

Going to Crossroads when I was a kid was almost like going to a theme park. Orange Juliuses and hotdogs, a trip to LeMans to ride the bumper cars (though they were gone by the time I was old enough to ride them), Toys By Roy (one of the last "real" toy shops you'll ever see), the two-story Emmer Brothers clothing store, John A. Brown's, the annual MDA Telethon in center court, July 4th fireworks, it was all incredible. Part of its demise is its owner(s)' own doing over the years, and part of it is lousy circumstance.

There's very little that Crossroads can do about the deterioration of the area north and northeast. That just crept up around them. And the addition of a movie theater was about a decade too late (remember that the AMC wasn't the first one - that General Cinema was). What Crossroads' owners failed to do over the years was keep the interior fresh and inviting - I think the interior has been renovated once, maybe twice in 34 years. Now its just a matter of atrophy.

I know the open-air "supersized" stripmalls are the wave of the future, but I'm not crazy about them. I don't like JCPenny's in Moore, because its too big, sprawling out over a single story. I used to like to run through to see if they were running sales on Dockers, but now I just let my wife go by herself...but I digress...

Crossroads was a site with a host of potential that was just never realized. And that's truly a shame.

-sd

I used to live up around Quail. I thought it was a great mall until then. I found a lot of shady stuff going on in that area. Not to mention that it's only a whopping mile from 122nd/Penn, and let's face it, that's not the best neighborhood.

I haven't went there since probably 2006, so I think that says a lot about what they have to offer. Penn offers the same, if not more. Sooner has enough to get you by. I went into Crossroads last year for one store and was sorely disappointed. I doubt I'll ever go back.

its just in the wrong area the center for retail is further west. Their grand plans never worked out look at the empty parcels by the movie theater and now with the Norman development and the highway construction its doomed. Besides the mall has a reputation it just can't shake

Quails interior is not in a decline...I go to that mall all the time. Its furnishings and finishes are the same as those in Penn. Nice floors, Glass barriers, same elevators, comparable stores. Of course Penn has a couple more upscale things and places. But I actually prefer Quail over Penn. I like it much better. But yeah, Quail springs does have more than its share of trouble makers, but that shouldn't discourage you from shopping there. Its a very nice mall.

But no arguement here, Penn is the nicest of all the malls. But Quail is no pushover.

That "reputation" thing that hit Crossroads really frustrates me, because I think it was blown *way* out of proportion. Not saying that some bad stuff hasn't happened at Crossroads, but most people don't realize the first publicized "gangbanger" shooting in an OKC mall was at the ever-trendy, chronically hip Penn Square, not Crossroads. Even as recently as the last few years, we still visited Crossroads to shop at Penny's and never encountered any problems at all, or even felt threatened. There are some who wanted to create the illusion that there was an armored gang of thugs hiding at every corner, and you're life was in danger if you dared to show up at the parking lot, and that simply wasn't true or accurate. Again, I don't pretend there has never been a crime problem at Crossroads, but I think the degree to which it has been perceived is in direct proportion to at least some people's preconceived notions about the area in which Crossroads exists.

As far as losing the retail, I always thought Steve n Barry's as a "anchor" tenant was a losing proposition from the word go. A two-story, glorified T-shirt shop? Gimme a break - and just this week they file for bankruptcy - gee, that's a shock.

Crossroads best hope for some type of "reinvention" passed about three years ago (give or take) when Wards went belly up, and the space couldn't be re-let until the bankruptcy action was concluded. During that time, I think there was activity behind the scenes to get Sears from 44th and Western to take over that space, but couldn't because of the legal issues. Sears lost interest, and the rest is history. Obviously, we'll never know if that would have "saved" Crossroads, but it would have at least given them a boost; that old Sequoyah/Reding location is getting scarier by the day -- and I've been going there since I was a kid....then again, I'm not at all sure Sears will be around in another five years..