Watch how people react when Louisiana’s 40-to-50-year-old dead malls in high-crime areas close or are likely to close or just sit vacant.
Folks who have no idea how the real estate market works go on social media and demand they get replaced by upscale properties like Dave and Busters, Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, Legoland, or even a new Six Flags.
Such was the case this past week at two dead or nearly dead malls in North Louisiana: Pecanland Mall in Monroe, which is on life support, and South Park Mall in Shreveport, which officially closed 21 years ago but was bought by and converted into a church.
Three years ago, I wrote about Pecanland Mall’s many problems.
“Teenagers brawled in the food court and behaved like savages in the wild. Every time I witnessed such a display, I thought of Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday in Tombstone and muttered ‘Very cosmopolitan’ before I traipsed on to the next point of interest,” I wrote.
“Monroe’s economy suffered. State Farm had a corporate office in Monroe that employed 1,300 people but the company relocated that office out-of-state 20 years ago.”
When I was a reporter on assignment in South Florida, I interviewed one mother furious that the local mall enforced a policy stating no child under 18 could stroll the mall unescorted without an adult. She told me she couldn’t afford a babysitter and gave me perhaps the most clueless, uneducated quote I’ve ever put to paper: “My children have a Constitutional right to be in the mall without an adult.”
Never mind that the mall is private property, and, no, the Founding Fathers who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 did not give your children the right to raise hell there.
Idiot parents will help close Pecanland Mall. Idiot politicians who allow the local economies to die will help close that mall. Bleeding heart district attorneys who refuse to get tough on crime at that mall will help close it. And, then, of course, online shopping will seal the deal.
Last week a sketchy retail investment group out of New York purchased Pecanland Mall. The mall is as good as dead.
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Meanwhile, in Shreveport, a church purchased the old South Park Mall. Church officials announced this month that it’s vacating the property.
Two local men who revere Shreveport history and formed Twin Blends have taken advantage of AI to recreate the mall in its prime. The videos are nice to watch, but they capture a Shreveport that is gone and is likely never coming back. The same is true for the Shreveport-Bossier area’s other dead malls.
No sooner did the church announce it was vacating the property than people clamored for all sorts of upscale retail shops to take over. Shreveport and its economy are not what they were in the 1970s and 1980s. Upscale retail shops only go where the money is. In 2026, the money is not in Shreveport.
Don’t give that land to another nonprofit that doesn’t contribute tax revenue. Don’t let properties sit vacant. And don’t have unrealistic expectations of what might replace those buildings.
Use that land to make money.
The land where Pecanland Mall sits once had pecan trees. The land where South Park Mall sits was undeveloped for years, but if the soil is good to grow crops there then maybe that’s the best use of it?
Maybe one day malls will have a cultural renaissance and come back?
Maybe.
But not until and unless society reforms itself.
Warhammer is a journalist with more than 20 years or professional experience. Follow Warhammer on Twitter @Real_Warhammer.
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