"Wausau shows how an economically thriving community might shop in a post-mall age," the Journal wrote. The Journal cited a 2016 Pew Research Center finding that Wausau had the highest proportion of middle-class residents of any city in the U.S., using this mall's decline as a symbol of broader American shopping trends. In 2017, the Wall Street Journal came to central Wisconsin for a report on the way these forces were affecting the Wausau Center mall. When online retail started to take hold, it further ate into shopping malls' share of retail spending. That was true in Wausau, too, where large retailers - Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, TJ Maxx - opened locations in Rib Mountain, luring shoppers away from the downtown mall. In the late '90s and early 2000s, shoppers were migrating to big-box stores in suburban strips. The 21st century has not been so kind to the shopping mall. A 1986 book by the editors of Consumer Reports listed shopping malls alongside air travel, the birth control pill and the disposable diaper as one of the 50 products that revolutionized Americans' lives. And by the 1980s, they had cultural cachet, too. By 1975, malls accounted for one-third of all United States retail sales. The Wausau Center mall opened almost 30 years after the Southdale Center mall in the Minneapolis suburb of Edina became the world's first enclosed mall in 1956. "If you asked me to do that today, I'd say no way," Jurgella said. "You just have to block things out, but sometimes I blush." "I try to just focus on something and look in a straight line," the newspaper quoted her saying at the time. A reporter for the Daily Herald even interviewed her about her strategies for keeping a straight face while she posed. Jurgella remembers the crowds of people and the excitement of the opening-week events. is that real?' And they'd poke you in the face!" "And it was so funny because people would walk right up to your face and be like, 'Is. "We had to stand there for an hour at a time and try not to blink," Jurgella said. For the mall-opening gala, her friend convinced her to take a job as a live mannequin. She had graduated from high school in June and had a friend who was working at a Prange's department store. That's the way it felt to Carrie Jurgella. The central Wisconsin city, then of about 53,000 people, finally had something to brag about. For a lot of people in Wausau, the city getting a mall of its own was a sign Wausau was joining the modern age. In the early '80s, an eight-square-block, "fully climate-controlled" enclosed shopping mall was the height of retail cool. There were clowns, and cookware demonstrations by a Le Creuset representative. Two actors from the CBS soap opera "The Young and the Restless" signed autographs. Families thronged Third Street waiting for their turn inside the building. The city threw a parade that featured, the Wausau Daily Herald reported, "Star Wars characters Princess Leia, Darth Vader, Seethreepio and a storm trooper," among others. In August 1983, some 15,000 people came to the grand opening of the Wausau Center mall. "But you also just have to hold your breath and jump sometimes, and hope that you're guiding it in the right direction."Īngela Major/WPR Wausau Center Opened With A Big Party. You have to have the analysis," said Wausau Mayor Katie Rosenberg. For Wausau, the question now is whether the new owners' vision of mixed-use retail and residential development, complete with a pedestrian bridge to the river, will do for downtown in the next three decades what the mall did when it was established. The Wausau Center mall was born early in the mall boom, and its death comes as analysts project hundreds of other mall closures are imminent. But the city also has an ambitious plan to remake the downtown space, which is now owned by a newly formed nonprofit with financial backing from local foundations. Small-city malls have been in decline for more than a decade, and the story of the hollowing out and eventual closure of the Wausau mall is not unique. The front of the Wausau Center Mall during demolition Friday, June 4, 2021, in Wausau, Wis.
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