BILL KNIGHT

As a Baby Boomer, I was never a “mall rat.” After school or on weekends, I’d meander past Doc’s Newsstand, the sporting-goods aisle at Firestone, a clothing store, Ben Franklin’s, and either the drug store for a cherry Coke or the diner/soda shop Grab-A-Snack if I wanted to hear a jukebox — all around the small-town square a few blocks from home. The closest near-mall was the Town & Country Shopping Center 45 miles away in Quincy.

However, as a Peorian in my late 20s and early 30s, I often spent time at Northwoods Mall. So when I heard that Northwoods was losing another anchor store due to a bankruptcy, I realized I hadn’t visited the commercial space for years and wanted to see what some people’s hand-wringing was all about.

It was a wistful visit.

Now owned by the Kohan Retail Investment Group, the Great Neck, N.Y., company that has 45 U.S. malls, including 14 in the Midwest, Northwoods celebrated its 50th anniversary last summer. Its private-company owner has had a “checkered history,” as reported by the Times-Republican newspaper in Marshalltown, Iowa, where Kohan has the Marshalltown Mall.

“Most of the disputes revolve around nonpayment of utility bills, property taxes and mortgage payments,” wrote T-R editor Robert Maharry.

Nevertheless, Northwoods manager Julie Revallo expressed surprise at last month’s announcement by the RoomPlace furniture store that it will close at some point.

Today, Northwoods is markedly different than years past, but there are no Illinois tumbleweeds bouncing through a virtual ghost town (like Galesburg’s Sandburg Mall, which closed in 2018).

Stopping at Northwoods on a winter day, there were familiar sights, such as seniors enjoying a walk and a sense of community, illusion or not. But I missed spots I recalled: KB Toys, Coach House Gifts, Swiss Colony, Hardee’s, Fannie May, Garcia’s Pizza …

I’d bought a suit at Bachrach, a sofa at Montgomery Ward, eyeglasses at Sears, and clothes at Eddie Bauer; all gone, I’d lunched at Skewer Inn’s salad bar, sat at a book-signing at Waldenbooks, rang a bell for the Salvation Army “Red Kettle” campaign, and spent more than a few quarters playing Asteroids or Battle Zone at Aladdin’s video arcade.

Gloria Jean’s Coffees and Auntie Anne’s survive, in new locations, and, seeming to aim for a teen hangout customer base that no longer has JR or Musicland, FYE offers new and used music, movies, video games, and more (although it seems to have more candy than an explosion at a Casey’s). But Sears is empty as are at least four other spaces.

Of course, Northwoods isn’t unique. The global real estate services company Jones Lang LaSalle, Inc. says mall vacancies are at their highest level in 15 years, and that’s after decades of decline. In the mid-1980s, there were about 25,000 U.S. malls, according to Business Insider, before the 2008 recession, a 50% drop in holiday mall shopping between 2010 and 2013, some 7,000 retailers shutting down in 2017 alone, and the pandemic dramatically increasing e-commerce.

Through the decades, shopping evolved. In Peoria, downtown was hurt by Sheridan Village and other shopping centers, which in turn felt the effect of an indoor alternative at Northwoods. Plus, the International Council of Shopping Centers reports that between 48% and 73% of younger consumers still gravitate to malls’ communal experience. Obviously, there are differences between Boomers (born 1946-1964), Gen X (1965-1980), Millennials (1981-1996) and Gen Z (1997-2012), so it’s understandable that savvy mall managers are adjusting marketing and atmospheres to compete.

Furthermore, successes exist. Last summer, market analysis from Coresight Research found foot traffic in “top-tier” malls was up 12% from 2019 to 2022. (Coresight defines “top-tier” malls as those located in affluent areas “where a typical shopper has an annual income of over $200,000,” with newer brands and luxury retailers.) And lower-tier malls can be stable, too. The Quad Cities’ Northpark and Southpark Malls, owned by the public company Macerich, seemed busy at a recent visit, with food courts full of families and crowds throughout. And entrepreneurs are repurposing former malls: Landmark Mall in Alexandria, Va., is being converted to a medical center; The Avenue in downtown Milwaukee is being redeveloped as a multi-use space featuring apartments and “co-working” offices; and, ironically, Amazon is turning shuttered malls in Baton Rouge, La., and Knoxville, Tenn., into distribution centers.

Maybe it was a mistake to return to retrace old steps in a new time. The sense of a convenient substitute for a town square was artificial anyway. It’s tempting to remember novelist Thomas Wolfe’s title “You Can’t Go Home Again.” On the other hand, he also wrote, “Look Homeward, Angel.”

My real hometown is different, too, but alive and thriving.