Dead Mall: Seminole Mall Florida

*DEMOLISHED AND REPLACED WITH SEMINOLE CITY CENTRE*
Hello Everyone! Exploring my first dead mall. This is Seminole Mall located in Seminole, Florida. It's officially listed as a dead mall on deadmalls.com. Many stores have been left abandoned or vacant.

When hard times hit in the late 2000s, a lot of the smaller stores closed followed by the larger anchor stores. This brought about the foreclosure of the mall in 2011 by a bank holding company.

Built in 1965, Seminole Mall holds a lot of historical significance to the area as it was the location of the meeting where City Council members chose to designate Seminole as a city. It was considered Seminole Downtown at the time, and still is today.

Developers, North American Development Group (who specialize in managing and the development/redevelopment of shopping centers) along with Primerica Group One purchased this mall sitting on 39 acres with a proposal in mind to build a larger more modern shopping center renaming it Seminole City Center razing this mall completely. Its fate with the wrecking ball will commence between December of 2015 and March of 2016 with full completion of the newer open air shopping center one year later.

NADG and Primerica Group One purchased Seminole Mall for only $14.6 million, much cheaper than what Downtown Seminole purchased it for in 2006 paying $35.7 million. A year later, in 2013, they purchased two commercial business buildings near the property for $1.8 million. These will be part of the redevelopment process and will not be razed. One of the anchor stores currently in business at Seminole Mall, Stein Mart, will be relocating to one of these buildings before demolition commences.

Only a few stores remain. K-Mart closed its doors in 2012 and Ross closed in January of 2014 leaving behind Stein Mart and Bells as the larger anchor stores. Publix also relocated across the road, and CVS closed more recently. Most of the smaller stores and all of the restaurants are gone. There is also an attached plaza which has mostly closed stores. This mall has a unique design with the mall and plaza combined, and was once a hustling and bustling place to shop.

I believe this is the end of the mall era which saddens me, personally. I have always preferred them over the newer open air plazas. I still remember when it was the malls that took over the downtown shopping areas. Now the big box stores are taking over the malls. They are more convenient to shop in, especially during inclement weather not having to drive to other areas of the parking lot, or dodging traffic while walking on foot. Everything was right there including a foot court. Clearwater Mall, also nearby in Florida, was foreclosed upon the same year, also replaced with an open air shopping center.

I wanted to document this history before it was lost to the recking ball for good. This seems to be the fate of many malls of today, soon to be yesteryear.

Thanks for watching! :)


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