Time is a thief, yes, but also a cruel shape-shifter. It changes how we see things.
I’ve been around long enough to know WestShore Plaza asthe cool mall. The upscale mall. The place to be. It had a Saks Fifth Avenue, the first in Tampa Bay. It had Florida-fabulous Burdines, which slotted in for Maas Brothers in the 1990s. It had a standalone Bebe in the golden age of bandage dresses. A trip to WestShore signified the stuff of movie dreams, a luxurious day of fashionable trotting ending with a slab of lasagna at Maggiano’s.
The mall is still there, technically. But it’s not really there.
I spent a recent afternoon wandering through WestShore, one of a few dozen people haunting the place. The mall is on borrowed time. An investment firm bought the property with plans to erect a ubiquitous “mixed-use” tableau. You know. Offices, apartments, shopping, restaurants. Kind of like … a mall? As the Tampa Bay Rays move into the neighborhood, as tastes change, as life plugs on, the mall must surrender to the mulish gods of redevelopment.
We don’t yet know its last day, but it might as well be now. It’s an arthouse horror movie inside those walls, an ominous fever dream. The decor is the same as it was: Tuscan Mom kitchen with twisting bronze light fixtures, aquamarine ceilings, window boxes of pink flowers, worn diamond tile floors.
Bebe went out of business at WestShore Plaza and other malls in 2017.
But now, the once plush environs come with an air of giving up. On a sleepy Tuesday in August, a majority of stores were shuttered, posted promises to be “back soon” flung into a liminal space where big hair and dreams go to die.
OK, dramatic, yes. Probably because I was born in the 1980s, I have an outsized affection for all malls. In a country so economically stratified and divided, dying malls represent a fading middle class playground, a third space for freedom-seeking teenagers, a bonding forum for daughters and moms, a breeding ground for job skills, for romance, for hijinks. Even now, there’s something about the bleachy smell, the stately mannequins, the squishy leather chairs that scream, “In here, you can be anything.”
I worked in Clearwater’s Countryside Mall all through my teen years, as did my friends. I sold CDs at one store and telescopes at another. A guy I know slung sweets at the cookie stand and held up heart-shaped cakes to the pretty girls at Wet Seal. Another friend managed the Sunglass Hut, where my boyfriend and I would slip under the gate after closing and loiter among Moschino specs we couldn’t afford. I once fished a Tampa Bay Bucs jersey (Mike Alstott) from the dumpster in the alley behind Sports Fan-Attic. I still have it.
Fewer locals are choosing to spend their money or time at WestShore Plaza.
Sometimes we’d venture to WestShore on weekends seeking the finer things. You know, a Santa’s White Christmas at Barnie’s Coffee, a hug from a giant teddy bear at FAO Schwarz. That was before International Plaza opened, bringing a new stratosphere of true luxury to Tampa. When that mall opened, Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus and Lord & Taylor ushered in the kind of bougie competition that would demote WestShore into … well, what it is now.
And luxury has worked, in a sense. A certain type of mall, the so-called “Class A” mall, appears to be doing just fine among Gen Z shoppers, who romanticize the analog andare steadily bringing back the in-person buying experience. Per The New York Times, Simon Property Group, which owns International Plaza, has enjoyed a drastic rebound in stock prices and revenue over the past three years.
It’s the lower- and middle-class malls that can’t seem to figure it out. I wish they could, especially in putridly hot and rainy Florida, where no reasonable person should prefer an outdoor strip of stores, and where any half-baked mall becomes an oasis.
A look at WestShore Plaza as COVID-19 began to force closures on March 23, 2020.
Stubbornly, I choose to believe that the proverbial mall death is not a foregone conclusion. I know plenty of teenagers who love the mall as much as I did 30 years ago (and, OK, today). Even in these hierarchical times, these chopped salad days of high-end shopping hauls broadcast on vertical video, maybe there’s still a place for broke interlopers. Maybe there’s still a need for a crispy-cool retail hub with clearance sales and ketchup-coated food court trays.
WestShore Plaza today bears all the hallmarks of attempts to desperately reinvent itself, sad signifiers of failed EAT-SHOP-PLAY. There are shuttered gyms and yoga studios, a pediatric medical center, lonely craft stations for kids inside JCPenney, a virtual reality gaming arena.
I lingered outside that last place for a while, watching advertisements rotate on an electronic directory. Posters for sushi and taco spots mingled with signs for ear piercing at Claire’s and a dystopian social media photo op “museum” called Selfie WRLD. An ad for the gaming center cycled across the screen, shouting ironies into the ghostly corridors of the death-rattling mall:
ESCAPE REALITY.
If only.
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