Thanks guys,
LOL, I really pictured roaring through those halls, but there are way more obstacles than in the Blues Brothers (stone planters, winding stairs, railings, columns). I believe the mall they used was completely closed and they could basically run over whatever they wanted (with compensation I presume)
Crossroads is still open to the public for now, even though it really quit being a mall back around 2008. There are a few small local Mexican-based shops around the center section keeping the doors open amid the rapidly increasing dilapidated conditions. It's mostly an indoor playground for the kids of the surrounding neighborhoods at this point.
Jdraupp:
You are probably familiar with YouTuber Dan Bell and his "Dead Mall" series. I ran across him when trying to find ghost town videos, and it inspired me to go look up the big malls I spent much of my youth in. It dawned on me that the old indoor malls are the ghost towns of my generation. Dan adds echoing vintage musak to his vids and it makes them really creepy.
Chuck W:
It seems to be luck of the draw based on location.
OKC had 4 major malls built between 1959 and 1982. Penn Square (in the first pic above with the 911) is the oldest, but has always been expanding and busy because the area it was built in developed as an upscale area because of the close proximity of the posh Nichols Hills addition.
Quail Springs, the last, built in '82, was put out in the middle of nowhere and everyone thought they were nuts! But they had the last laugh as that was squarely where the new yuppie expansion developed more than 20 years later. 15 years later in the mid '90s, the new turnpike connecting NW OKC with Tulsa was built right next to it. Quail lucked out. They almost shut their doors many times during the interim.
Crossroads was not as lucky. It was built on the outskirts at the time in a developing area in 1974. Unfortunately by the 1990s that area devolved into a cesspool of industrial buildings, titty bars, and gang wars. It was a gang shooting, involving one death, in the mall itself in 2001 that was the final blow causing the remaining major stores to begin vacating. Now it's so dead even the gangs won't bother with it.
Shepherd Mall (1964) was built in an older part of town near OCU, and was popular in the 1960s-1970s, however all but dead by 1990. The update and expansion of Penn Square in 1987, a mere 15 minutes away in a nicer part of town, pretty much killed it. It is now an office park.
PDWright: the 1990s seem right, as the beginning of the online boom. The malls that suffered also suffered from insanely poor management decisions like you say.
Sorry to ramble, but the history of things always gets me going.
I'd love to hear any other stories from you guys.