A Look Inside the Ruins of Northridge Mall

Nov. 21, 2019

8:57 a.m.

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Photo Credit: RayRayProPhoto (Rachel Semanski)

Northridge Mall is an abandoned shopping mall located on the Northwest side of Milwaukee, the twin replica of still-operating Southridge Mall. Open between 1972 and 2003, it was once a popular destination for shoppers. Decades went by and Northridge gained a reputation as crime-ridden and unpleasant for shoppers, eventually leading to its closure. Today, Northridge Mall still sits in an eerie state of emptiness and decay.

A Chinese company under the name Black Spruce obtained ownership of the building in 2009 in hopes of redeveloping it, but nothing has happened since. This year, City of Milwaukee officials called for its demolition after so many years of trespassers and vandalism, saying Northridge had become more than 50% useless for renovation. Since the electrocution of a worker in July, security at the site has aggressively increased as the city fights for ownership and demolition.

With the help of legal access from MiR Tactical, who held an airsoft tournament inside the mall in September with permission from an owner of the building, I was allowed inside Northridge the morning before their event to obtain photographs and video of the state it’s currently in. What I observed was a state of eeriness and nostalgia, an empty building that acts as a time capsule of how we used to function with the concept of malls.

The foundations of the building’s late-20th century interior and styles are in good structural condition, but graffiti, broken glass and vandalism cover most of what remains. The building is only lit by natural lighting that comes from windows and the colossal geometric ceiling design. It’s crazy how freakishly breathtaking a degraded space can be with all the history it holds.

https://rayrayprophoto.wixsite.com/northridgemall

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