Heritage Park Mall, located in Midwest City, OK. This one is really sad. Unlike Crossroads Mall, this one has been completely shut down for several years and is in an advanced state of decay.
This is where I spent all of my teen years. The flight from the city to custom homes on acreages during the oil boom was a big part of the reason for this mall being as big a deal as it was in its early years. Half the size of Crossroads, it was nonetheless a very modern and upscale mall with Sears, Dillard's, Wards, Wilsons, bed and bath shops, a grand piano store, Hickory Farms, and one of the first big video stores (where you could buy new movies in both VHS and Beta, for $60-$225 each, roughly) as well as a 3 screen theater and lots of nice restaurants, no cheesy food court.
I attended the grand opening of this place in 1981 where the cast of Happy Days among other celebrities of the time played a sports tournament as part of the festivities.
Under construction in 1978:
The skinny...
The yuppie flight back to the city after the oil bust was the first blow. Then Wilsons went under in 1989, replaced with a Service Merchandise that went under in 2000 along with Montgomery Ward, greatly reducing foot traffic. In the 90s the mall was seriously outdated compared to the big shopping plazas in Oklahoma City and smaller stores vacated rapidly. Dillard's left shortly after, leaving only Sears.
By 2007, the mall had still never received a single update and stood mostly empty:
The building of a huge modern shopping plaza with Lowes, Target, Khols, etc, and all the chain restaurants you could shake a stick at on the other side of the town rendered Heritage Park completely irrelevant.
In 2011, the few remaining shops were given notice to vacate before the power was shut off.
I had a job near there yesterday and decided to pay a visit for the first time in 20 years. I had heard the place had closed, but was shocked at the condition of it!
Continued