A Crossroads update

The mall that just won't die. That is Crossroads Mall. It's like a huge flying cockroach that you keep trying to kill by stepping on it, but just won't die because its damn carcass is too squish-proof. Crossroads Mall has lost every long-time anchor: Ward's, Foley/Macy's, J.C. Penney's, and Dillard's. It even lost Steve & Barry's Crappy College XXL Megastore.

Thank goodness though for that southside ingenuity, that rugged hard-headedness that won't take defeat as the last word..instead of having a completely blank sign fronting I-35, they've filled up the spots maintaining the appearance of a mall, somewhat. It announces to a hundred thousand commuters a day on I-35 that its major anchors are Bath&Body Works, Waldenbooks, and Chick fil-A, and that there is an AMC movie theater on I-240 in front of the mall. That's what I call "maintaining appearances" through hard times.

And thank goodness that ODOT did not go through with an overhaul of the I-35/I-240 intersection just because it would have blocked off the main I-240 exit to this oasis of cosmopolitan shopping that is Crossroads Mall. Nevermind that there are deadly car accidents every day here, and the constant traffic tangle during the day, because if Crossroads Mall had died, the southside would have been without its crown jewel, Crossroads Mall.