Another day, another shopping mall demo

The third and final round of this fiscal year’s Ohio Building and Site Development Revitalization grants includes funding to take down the Westland Mall in Columbus.

Reports from WCHM-TV in Columbus say the mall has been vacant since 2017 and that current plans call for the land beneath it to be redeveloped as part of a casino and mixed-use project. Officials told WCHM-TV the mall's demolition will start this spring.

Shopping malls have joined coal-fired power plants as some of the most frequently targeted for demolition buildings in the 2020s. So far this decade, malls in the following locations have been identified by Construction & Demolition Recycling as targeted for demolition: Phoenix; Topeka, Kansas; Norfolk, Virginia; San Bernardino, California; Florissant, Missouri; Fairfield, Ohio; and Utica, New York.

As with several previous mall demolition projects, people interviewed by local media outlets have used terms like “eyesore” to describe the recent state of the Westland Mall. Others interviewed share fond memories of a retail center that had been in operation since 1969.

According to the Ohio Capital Journal, the mall in Columbus is not the only big-ticket demolition project covered by the new round of funding. Money also is being earmarked to go toward further dismantling the Rubber Bowl stadium in Akron, Ohio.

According to a late 2022 Akron Beacon-Journal report, the 35,000-seat Rubber Bowl was described as “partially demolished [and] ravaged by vandals and splattered with graffiti, look[ing] like the ruins of some ancient amphitheater.”

The Rubber Bowl opened in 1940, with its predominant use as the home of the University of Akron football team. It also hosted numerous concerts, including the Rolling Stones, Bon Jovi, Simon & Garfunkel, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the Grateful Dead and Aretha Franklin.