Dead and Dying retail

Nicholas Eckhart

Euclid Square Mall is a major dead mall in Euclid, Ohio. Inside the mall there are churches instead of stores, an auction-house, meeting room, wedding chapel, and a salon can also be found inside. Those places would be enough to fill a very small mall, but Euclid Square is around 700,000 square feet! I call Euclid Square a dead mall since it has clearly died as a mall, today, not a single store can be found inside of it. Dillard's Clearance Center is the only store on the site and has even permanently blocked off the mall entrance to their store. It seems that numerous driving schools use the massive empty parking lot here for their advantage.

The Euclid Square Mall opened in 1977. Despite being 700,000 square feet and on a site sprawling 71 acres along a major highway, Euclid Square was built with only two anchor stores. Those anchor stores were originally Higbee's and May Company. Both Higbee's and May Company were well known at the time in the Cleveland area. The mall corridors seem to have featured too many smaller stores for a two anchor store mall. As part of Dillard's acquisition of Higbee's in 1992 the Euclid Square Higbee's became a Dillard's. May stores merged the May Company Cleveland division and Kaufmann's divisions in 1993; this meant that all May Company stores in Ohio including the one here were re-branded as Kaufmann's.

The nearby Richmond Mall (renamed Richmond Town Square in the late 1990s) is credited with causing the demise of Euclid Square. Richmond Mall opened in 1966. First of all Richmond had pulled in the then retail powerhouses known as Sears and JCPenney, this gave Richmond Mall a major advantage over Euclid Square. In the late 1990s Richmond Mall began a massive remodel and expansion into Richmond Town Square, drawing in the Kaufmann's store from Euclid Square Mall as another anchor. The closure of Kaufmann's would mark the start of Euclid Square's slow death.

After Kaufmann's closure many small interior stores began closing and less people went to the mall because it now only featured a Dillard's department store. Another major blow to the mall came in 2002 when Dillard's closed down the second story of the store and converted into a clearance center. In 2004 Outlets USA moved into the former Kaufmann's, but that store no longer featured a mall entrance and I believe Dillard's sealed their mall entrance when they became a clearance center. Outlets USA only lasted here until 2006. After Outlets USA closed it was proposed that the Euclid Square Mall would be demolished, but this never happened and the mall has stayed open.

As the last of the stores at this mall closed in the late 2000s many churches began moving into the mall. Now there are just over 20 places left inside the mall. Those places include almost 20 churches, an auction house, a meeting room, and a salon. The lease for Dillard's is set to expire later in 2013, which could mean the closure of the last store on the Euclid Square Mall site.

The following photos are of the May Co./ Kaufmann's/ Outlets USA store. This store has been vacant since 2006.

The Former Toys R Us store

I believe this was a Tire Kingdom store

The Red Lobster Restaurant

This is the Dillard's Outlet Store. As of 2013 Dillard's is the only store on the entire mall site and for miles around. This was originally a Higbee's store. Currently, only the first floor of this store is still open.

A vintage Dillard's truck!

Here is an old Fazio's grocery store. It later became Rini-Rego and has been closed since.

I believe this was a drugstore for Fazio's.

Former Twin-Valu / Super Kmart / Great Lakes Exposition Center

Former Fifth Third Bank

Now on to the inside of this mall. I am not sure what many of these stores were. If anyone knows what one or more of the stores are please comment or email me (nicholas@deadanddyingretail.com).