SENECA, Pa. (EYT) – Cranberry Mall has been a cornerstone of our community since its opening in 1981. Of course, forty years ago, every town in America had a mall just like ours: sprawling one-story indoor bazars of shoes, cinnamon rolls, movie theaters, gadgets, and clothing.

Every step was a wonderland for your senses. The smells of goodies—fried, baked, frozen—filled the air. The music overhead was usually a combination of bland oldies and trendy top 40 hits. It was designed to make you not really notice it, and also make you not want to leave. Lights from the arcade danced in their come-hither way, tempting—usually successfully—impulsive gamers to reach for that high score, the one they’d brag about to their friends at school the next day.

This is what Cranberry Mall was for our area in 1981, and for at least a couple of decades after: a cornerstone. But a visit to the mall now is not so much a trip down memory lane as it is a fall into one of its parking lot’s hundreds of potholes—potholes that are perfectly emblematic of the deterioration of the American shopping mall.

Inside, few businesses remain. The Movies at Cranberry is still showing the latest Hollywood audiovisual offerings. But it appears business is slowing for them. New limited hours of operation are posted on a wall across from the concession stand. At the other end of the mall, Joann’s Fabrics is open for business. It’s the only business that’s open on this side of that mall during my visit on Tuesday morning. Its welcoming lights spill out into the dim, tiled walkway where most of the lights are turned off and gates cover empty spaces where thriving businesses used to sell dishes and alarm clocks and bedspreads and shirts and ties. It’s at this moment that it occurs to me. It’s getting close to lunchtime but I can’t smell a single slice of pizza, or an Orange Julius, or a hamburger.

I turn around and start walking toward the food court. It’s back on the other side of the mall, near the theater. To get there, I’ll pass two large spaces that were once occupied by JC Penney and The Bon Ton. Outside, their signs are still on the walls, but their spaces are largely empty—just a few countertops and old display cabinets. Between the two stores, once a place of gathering, laughing, and sharing sips of Icees, a ring of nozzles peak out from a pool that’s green with algae, spray their liquid viridescence a few feet into the air before it returns to the pool with a splash to be recycled through their pipes again and again. I keep walking and pass another pond, this one larger, but also engaged in the same repetition. It’s also overgrown with the grassy scum.

As I pass shop after shop, most of them dark and gated, I’m mesmerized by the different styles of barriers that protect the abandoned chambers that are mostly out of view. Each one is designed to roll out of the way, either up or to the side. They all use a similar construction, but each one is different than the next. They’re a reflection, no doubt, of past tenants’ needs to protect their valuable wares and showcase them at the same time. I wonder who these earlier proprietors were. What caused them to open their shops in Cranberry Mall all those years ago? Did they have dreams of growing a retail business out of our part of Pennsylvania and into the rest of the country? Maybe the world? Or were they corporate stores devoid of individualized character? Probably mostly the latter. But I like to think there were some locals in here, too. But now I’m wondering what caused them to close.

Finally, I’ve arrived at the food court. There’s a Pizzeria to my left and a Chinese Food place to my right. It looks like they’re getting ready to open, but I still can’t smell anything. I guess I’m not hungry. Ahead of me is Dunham’s Sports. Like Joann’s on the East side of the mall. Dunham’s is well-lit and stocked to the gills. It’s like I walked through a darkened desert from oasis to oasis. As I’m standing there, I look to my left and see Cranberry Place, a senior center run by Community Services of Venango County. I was right. This is an oasis.

This week, news broke that the mall, our mall, was once again listed for sale on Loopnet. Not surprising considering all the stories of shop owners fleeing, or being kicked out of, the mall. Apparently, it gets listed every year or two.

The listing is by Keller Williams of Beverly Hills, which reminds me, the mall is managed by Los Angeles-based Oakwood Management Group, Inc. It shows all the particulars of the property: square footage, acreage, zoning, the whole nine yards. It talks about all of things the mall could be, and they’re all very Californian: a cannabis cultivation facility, a logistics facility, a self-storage center, mixed-use multi-family and retail spaces. I mean, it reads like the kind of listing I used to see back in my hometown of Sacramento. Everything has to be mixed use. My friends used to tell me, “If you want to get drunk, all you have to do is pick up a California real estate magazine and take a shot every time you read ‘mixed use.’” It’s so urban and out of touch with us here in Seneca, Franklin, Oil City, and Clarion.

At the end of my visit to the Cranberry Mall, which was probably the first time I’ve visited in about a year, I can’t help but feel a bit sad. It’s not just the state of the Cranberry Mall itself, it’s that it’s a symbol of an era that has probably passed.

In an era of Amazon and Walmart, our children will likely never know the feeling of going to hang out at the mall. They won’t know the joy of running into friends at the food court, horsing around at the fountain, or running away from the security guard when their play got a little out of hand—hoping beyond hope that their parents won’t hear about what they did from someone who witnessed it first-hand as they were handed a sample of lotion at Bath and Body Works. At least, that’s what I think happened at malls back in the day. I wouldn’t know.