Saw this video get posted by Train Crew Kids on YouTube a few weeks back.
I'm not gonna lie, living extremely close to Century III Mall gives me the urge to go explore every now and again. That's where my first job ever was and where I spent so much time as a kid growing up. I drive by it almost daily when I run other errands and it is tempting to poke around a little. Knowing my luck I would get grabbed as a suspicious person or something, so I rely on what I see and read from others who are daring enough to share what they can see on the inside. It is well documented that the mall had been going downhill for years, and about 2 years ago the mall was considered "uninhabitable" and was forced to close to the public. Anchor store JC Penney was still operating at a respectable pace, but recently shut their doors amidst other company wide closures in the fall of 2020.
Since those closures, there hasn't been much talk about the mall at all - other than the usual complaining on local community Facebook pages. There were a few news stories back in 2019 that plans to knock down the property and redevelop it would be moving forward, but we haven't heard much about it since then. At any rate, the consensus amongst people that still talk about the mall is that at one point the mall would have had a decent shot of being revamped in some way or another. Now that it has sat abandoned for the better part of 2 years, it's extremely unlikely something like that would be possible. The best the local community can hope for is an eventual demolition and a thoughtful redevelopment process that mixes a variety of shopping, entertainment and living options.
I REALLY wish that there was some way they could save this incredible structure - but it just doesn't seem like that will ever be possible. I wasn't even really alive in it's glory days - but the place I remember going to as a kid is a far shot from the disrepair we see in the video above. For years people have been trying to gather answers from the very shady company Moonbeam Capital that owns the mall property, but they are able to seemingly dodge any heat that comes their way regarding the status of the property. Hopefully by some miracle we can get them out of the picture someday - but for now all we can do is watch it fall further and further into disrepair.
For the latest updates about the mall, I highly recommend following the Century III Mall Memories Facebook page. People share great photos and memories from the mall their often, which I really enjoy. Here was the recent post showing some of the most recent photos from the mall in it's severely damaged state.
There's also this great video showcasing the history of the mall and the timeline of it's demise from just a few months ago.