{"id":11503,"date":"2025-10-22T17:16:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T17:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/11503\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T17:16:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T17:16:07","slug":"berks-will-regret-loss-of-berkshire-mall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/11503\/","title":{"rendered":"Berks will regret loss of Berkshire Mall"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Berkshire Mall is all we have left, and if we let it go we deserve what comes next (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.readingeagle.com\/2025\/10\/15\/berkshire-mall-to-be-sold-demolished-and-redeveloped\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cEnd of an era,\u201d<\/a> Reading Eagle, Oct. 16).<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s already built. It has thriving small businesses. It makes money. But it needs repairs. So in steps an out-of-town developer.<\/p>\n<p>People who don\u2019t live here, don\u2019t shop at the mall and don\u2019t know a Pagoda from a Boscov\u2019s have decided it\u2019s more profitable to destroy the mall than to fix it, like the Fairgrounds Square Mall before it.<\/p>\n<p>We are already drowning in \u201cdevelopment,\u201d yet local bureaucrats and greed-addled developers maintain a deranged obsession with demolishing what is likely the last place in Berks County where someone can freely walk around in air conditioning without spending money.<\/p>\n<p>Where the Berkshire Mall stands with its spiraling stairs, glowing neon lights and soothing fountains of YouTube fame, these people will erect a strip of gray, boxy corporate slop.<\/p>\n<p>This \u201cmixed-use, open air\u201d nightmare will not last 50 years. It will, however, be an outdated eyesore from the moment it opens.<\/p>\n<p>There will be no fond memories or common experiences. There will be no aesthetics or architecture. It will be bland and sterile. It will be designed for AI-powered price gouging and little else. It will be owned and managed by people who love QR codes, self-checkout and automated customer service.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s already happened everywhere else. I guess we\u2019ve decided it\u2019s our turn.<\/p>\n<p>Leroy Scheidt<\/p>\n<p>Mount Penn<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Berkshire Mall is all we have left, and if we let it go we deserve what comes&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11504,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,5037,1559,28,128,130,129],"class_list":{"0":"post-11503","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reading","8":"tag-berks-county","9":"tag-letters-to-the-editor","10":"tag-opinion","11":"tag-pennsylvania","12":"tag-reading-city","13":"tag-reading-city-headlines","14":"tag-reading-city-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}