Yeah I want to say I went there more frequently with my mom when I was a kid back in the late 80s/early 90s. Hope you enjoy the walk through with how somber the whole thing is.
Nice I'm glad u captured the Holiday vibe in the Mall, definitely going to miss this place, Iconic peice of Portland , great video Steve ..Rest easy Lloyd thanks for the great times and memories, it was nice to have grown up in Portland during those days. This had all the feels at the end. 😔Happy Holidays to everyone here in Portland please be nice to one another. Thanks
I worked at Woolworths department store in 1961 through most of 1963. I remember it being an Open air mall. Also Nordstrom at the opposite end of Woolworths was just a shoe store. Had my first date at the ice rink. That first date is now my husband 58 years.
Christmas used to be so cozy throughout Portland, for me, from 2000-2008. I lived those 8 years like I knew this was coming. I mean, you can probably still see me out there somewhere and I left in 08 and moved to Aloha, Oregon. Lol. I picked up some bad habits during that time but Portland was still super fun. Thank You for the video. ✌🏾
The area is "sketchy" as you say because the mall started dying during the pandemic as well as the office buildings in the area have most workers working from home and that has had a ripple effect in the surrounding neighborhoods.
As of 2015, this was still a very active mall and had tons of stores with very little vacancy. It started to go downhill around 2017 with some more vacancies and it increased over the years. Now around 20 stores remain. That includes food places as well.
Lloyd Center - Urban Renaissance Group a real estate company with offices in Portland, announced a partnership Monday December 20, 2021 with lending company KKR Real Estate Finance Trust to take ownership of the 61-year-old mall with the intention of maintaining retail, work spaces and ice skating. Urban Renaissance Group has offices in Portland, Seattle and Denver. The Lloyd Center total retail floor area is 1,472,000 sq ft. I’m praying 🙏🏻 that we can save the Lloyd Center. I ❤️that place. I was wondering years old when it opened up.
@@plantmaster3339 The mayor of Portland didn't help by refusing federal assistance in cleaning up the 'summer of love' that costed hundreds of millions of dollars. As long as we let them run the streets decent families will continue to leave as soon as they can get out and you'll get 'Hell Valley' USA ran by Biff.
It was so much nicer before the remodel. I grew up going to LLoyd Center in the 70 and 80's. I was open air, Beautiful at Christmas time. Lots of music and joy. Joe Browns has the best Carmel Corn... Good days gone by... Thanks for posting.
Yeah especially since they’re planning on just doing the same old dumb thing with the land. I’m sure people will live living in overpriced housing next to Holliday Park with all the druggies and shootings. I would love, if they did anything new to the land, if they made it a mix of places like a few small business, maybe some food carts, hangout/activity areas or something, at least doing something cool with the land if they’re gonna demolish the mall.
@@StevetheAmateurHistorian I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if they turned that land into condos! How infuriating!!!! If they did have small businesses and food carts instead it wouldn’t be half bad. It’s just disgusting how Portland is changing. The condos that are over off of 82nd in Foster down the street from Fred Myers used to be is all condos down that way. And where the Cooper penny used to be. It’s sickening! Seriously WTF?!?! When I saw your video posted I had to read it three times to make sure I was reading the title right. Lloyd center being a dead memory just floors me😡I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised. Towards the end when you were in the parking garage I’m not certain, but I think Broudos the serial killer kidnapped a women there in the 60’s I think. Just had to throw that in there.
@@haumea420 oh yeah I forgot about that. I think the last woman he abducted was taken from that garage. Honestly, walking through there I felt like I could get abducted at any moment.
@@StevetheAmateurHistorian Right?! Once you started walking down there I was like oh shit?! I immediately thought of Brudos. The vibe down there has never been a good one.
I only lived in Portland for 4 years. Wow! One Saturday morning I was drinking coffee from Starbucks and I saw Tonya Harding skating on the ice. What a shame..
I’ve loved in the Northwest since 1998. Scratch loved, should have been lived but I have also LOVED a person (no longer together life happens) out here too. 😅. My grammar aside I am leaving Portland on Monday headed east to live with family. I have many fond memories of LLoyd Center mall. I got here in July 1998 and didn’t actually get down to Lloyd until the Christmas season that year. MAN what a fucking treat little bro, I saw the annual tree the first time and made it an annual tradition to go there every year around the holidays and look at the sights and lights etc. The very first thing I bought there was an original PlayStation (PS1). That’s how old I am. The food court every Sunday afternoon was always the place to be as well as the theaters. I saw the first X-men movie there as well as Mel Gibson’s The Patriot and the first Matrix. IN FACT The Matrix was THE first of many movies I saw there and who can forget the Phantom Menace? Star Wars Episode 1 1999? 99 was a great year for Movies. Seeing this made me nostalgic for those days. Sad to see what it’s become. I’m choosing to remember it as it was way back in the late 90s and early 2000’s. The decline really started in the mid 2010’s with the advent and acceleration of Amazon and online shopping. The pandemic was not the start of it, but it was the final mail in the coffin. RIP Lloyd Center, there are many who still do and always will remember you in your glory. Awesome video man!
I've seen the mall empty so many times working till close at the movie theater, way after the stores were closed, so it's not that weird, but sad. I spent a lot of time there, remember when it was still open air and Christmas in the early 80's as a kid. Glad I took pictures of the theater before it closed, and the old rink (my first job) before it was remodeled. Plus I went to Benson so I was there pretty much every day regardless.
What an incredible mall! I love the grand spiral staircase with the tree and the ice rink. Steve, you put this together beautifully from beginning to end. Amazing, beautiful, and educational. ❤
Yeah it really is pretty nice inside, especially since they did a lot of renovation around 2014. I definitely think the semi-sketchiness of the area has really helped kill its business.
The ice rink is much smaller than it was before the 2014-2016 renovations. I think I might have been there once since they shrunk the ice rink, and I had forgotten they had done that until I saw the overhead shot of it in the video. The stores on the north side towards Safeway are technically part of the original Lloyd Center. The Dollar Tree was once the affordable department store J. J. Newberry's.
God I loved that Mall. I remember shopping there from the 70's thru the early 2000's. It was such a wonderful place, especially at Christmas. Many, many, fond memories there with family and friends.
I was just there a couple weeks ago and it's still going. Ice rink is still going and there's a handful of stores. Definitely empty and creepy but some of the stores are nice.
Thank you for this. So many childhood memories. And it goes way back in my family. My mom worked at the popcorn shop when it first opened. I will take one last walk before they close the doors. I miss old Portland so much : ( I wish this place would be turned into a museum of Portland.
Lloyd Center - Urban Renaissance Group a real estate company with offices in Portland, announced a partnership Monday December 20, 2021 with lending company KKR Real Estate Finance Trust to take ownership of the 61-year-old mall with the intention of maintaining retail, work spaces and ice skating. Urban Renaissance Group has offices in Portland, Seattle and Denver. The Lloyd Center total retail floor area is 1,472,000 sq ft. I’m praying 🙏🏻 that we can save the Lloyd Center. I ❤️that place. I was wondering years old when it opened up.
Many malls are closing all over the country. There's a German guy living in LA who does YT videos walking around Santa Monica and even Rodeo Drive showing hundreds of stores that have closed. But there are several proposals for razing Lloyd Center and redeveloping the area.
I had a store in LC back in 99/00. We had the Suncoast spot until SC took it over. Sears was next to Marshall's btw. But back then thing were hopping pretty good. A shame to see it so empty.
So sad it went from being a place i loved to go to, to a place i wouldnt be caught dead at! This was bc of gangs & theft first, then bc many stores left bc of the lack of ppl coming & spending money. 😢 I will always miss ice skating there and watching the people ice skate while I ate my food in the food court
20 years ago I worked in the Smoke shop, T. Whittaker Tobacco - it was fun with a dysfunctional family vibe among the mall employees who took smoke breaks in our store...and it was already starting the downhill slide with crime and fights on the rise. It'll be missed...
It really has, I remember going there about this time of the year in 2019 and there was about 100 people in the food court area, and during this visit I saw only 3 people and I think only 3 eateries were still open.
II used to be obsessed with the concept of Dead Malls, but the whole Dead Mall thing is hitting way too close to home with Lloyd Center. Once those anchors go there's no coming back. I remember the Dead Malls website always said that the last store to cling to life in a dead mall was the Radio Shack, but that's based on some old assumptions about tech. What is it now; the Game Stop? I had a feeling things were bad at Lloyd Center, but not quite *this* dramatically bad. It's one thing for Mall 205 to be dead; it was always a bit of an afterthought. For real and serious, no other standalone mall in this city has ever had a remotely decent food court since Clackamas did their remodel in the early 2000s and apparently went with the Tier Zero Food Court plan and tried for outparcel eateries. I was just there; their outparcel plan bombed spectacularly on the west end of the mall. I first saw Lloyd Center as a visitor to Oregon in the 80's when it wasn't enclosed; I can still remember where our hosts parked the car and walked us into Meier & Frank. I was kind of baffled that people would walk outside in the damp in the winter to go away from the center of things, so I rejoiced when they enclosed everything. After I moved here, I used to walk Lloyd Center every week from about 2005-2012 era when it had a surprisingly decent food court, they hadn't ruined the rink yet, and they had every anchor store you'd expect except for J.C. Penney. I loved the odd underground parking situation on the north side; if you parked and walked through from the lower level you could pass by what was left of the Newberry store circa 2009, which by then was a Dollar General above ground. I can't remember when Nordstrom pulled out, but that really did accelerate the mall's decline. It was in that Nordstrom where I saw Catherine "Log Lady" Caulson shopping for shoes with someone I assumed was her daughter. It was a surreal moment; I am sure I was staring as she said something about wanting to see a shoe that was "more dressy" or "dressier". I imprinted on that mall so much that I was once hospitalized briefly at Legacy Emanuel and my partner was nice enough to bring me a ginormous cup of Paradise iced tea from the Paradise Bakery. It occurs to me that I have no idea where to get their cookies (or Bridge City) if Lloyd Centaur closes. What angers me, though, is the full arc of this area. They moved heaven and earth and displaced so many working-class families of color for their frickin' Urban Renewal land grab, along with the hospital, demolished so many homes and businesses, and a relatively short sixty years later they have the audacity to float the idea of doing it all again? I've seen so many pictures of what was lost; they had at least better leave the structures in place as they try to figure out what to do with the building itself. I used to follow these developments a lot more closely but it stressed me out, so please forgive if I ramble and just miss major milestones. As a postscript: Is there still a Bridge City downstairs at Pioneer Place Mall? Is Pioneer Place Mall even a thing anymore? :-o You can tell I avoid downtown. It shouldn't be incumbent upon me to basically have to learn martial arts to explore the city I chose to move to over 20 years ago, and yet here we are. ;/
It was kinda nice having Lloyd Center so close to Benson, back in the 70's. The cafeteria food was awful, so I'd sometimes go to the Hickory Farms to load up on the free samples for lunch. The ladies working there knew what I was doing, but I was polite about it, and we kept it our little secret so a horde didn't follow suit. I'll miss that mall. I hope the space is repurposed wisely.
That’s definitely a nice lunch break escape. As I heard they’re planning on repurposing it to residential and office space so, sadly, I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of it just becomes more overpriced “affordable housing”.
Lloyd Center - Urban Renaissance Group a real estate company with offices in Portland, announced a partnership Monday December 20, 2021 with lending company KKR Real Estate Finance Trust to take ownership of the 61-year-old mall with the intention of maintaining retail, work spaces and ice skating. Urban Renaissance Group has offices in Portland, Seattle and Denver. The Lloyd Center total retail floor area is 1,472,000 sq ft. I’m praying 🙏🏻 that we can save the Lloyd Center. I ❤️that place. I was wondering years old when it opened up.
Graduated Benson in 98 and I totally agree. After Freshman year we ate at Lloyd daily. My son is going to Benson in 2 years and it sucks he wont be able to experience the same thing. However now that it's remodeled he's going to have a lot of what we didn't
The times they are a changing. This was the granddaddy of Oregon malls. If it was not the first, it was sure the biggest mall in Oregon for a long time. So many memories.
My family used to go here in the 90's and early 2000's This was one of the classyiest most upscale malls at that time. Last time I went here was 2021 in December. The Sees was still open then. At one time this mall had 2 Gamestops, and a ToysRUs that was HUGE! The Ice Rink was also downsized and used to be huge! Was that perfect timing, or editing when you walked into the mall Queen's "Somebody to love" was playing. As if the mall just wanted love 💔
That is just so incredibly sad!! I live in Beaverton and so don't get out to NE Portland a whole lot, and now knowing that one of the only 2 malls that I know of (is Mall 205 still open?) is heading to the chopping block, so to speak. I think I may have eaten at the Cadillac Cafe (I think it was the space with red leather/vinyl chairs and booths) at least once :-( Thank you for sharing your perspective
Yeah it’s really unfortunate. I think the edge that small 205 has is even though there’s barely any businesses left in the mall person it has two successful anchor stores with Target and Home Depot and I know as of earlier this year all of Lloyd’s anchor stores are gone.
The mall closest to me, Washington Square, is still “rockin’ and rollin’” as far as business goes. Like any female, I like to shop 😛, and give quite a bit of business to JCPenney and Macys, both in person and online 🙂
Lloyd Center - Urban Renaissance Group a real estate company with offices in Portland, announced a partnership Monday December 20, 2021 with lending company KKR Real Estate Finance Trust to take ownership of the 61-year-old mall with the intention of maintaining retail, work spaces and ice skating. Urban Renaissance Group has offices in Portland, Seattle and Denver. The Lloyd Center total retail floor area is 1,472,000 sq ft. I’m praying 🙏🏻 that we can save the Lloyd Center. I ❤️that place. I was wondering years old when it opened up.
Fun vid. LC still has things to check out! Floating World Comics for one. Jim Brown's Carmel Corn is another. It's a dead mall compared to days of yore, but there's still events going on. Frankenstein Comic Swap was a blast last month. We took over both floors of the old H&M.
Lloyd Center - Urban Renaissance Group a real estate company with offices in Portland, announced a partnership Monday December 20, 2021 with lending company KKR Real Estate Finance Trust to take ownership of the 61-year-old mall with the intention of maintaining retail, work spaces and ice skating. Urban Renaissance Group has offices in Portland, Seattle and Denver. The Lloyd Center total retail floor area is 1,472,000 sq ft. I’m praying 🙏🏻 that we can save the Lloyd Center. I ❤️that place. I was three years old when it opened up.
When they usually announce a mall is closing. Some tenants(usually national chains) bail out of mall early so it would make sense if some stores that were still open this year would have left by now. This looks like a nice mall, sad to see it kick the bucket. R.I.P
Was last there in 2010. Was so “thriving” then! Parking garage was always full. Loved shopping @ Nordstrom’s. Lots of energy…many shoppers. Enjoyed watching ice skaters! Tanya Harding skated there when she was young. All so sad😢
Tanya Harding skated at Clackamas Town Center mainly but did learn to skate at Lloyd Center. I only remember this because my friend growing up played hockey at Clackamas and she was there all the time
The final nail in the coffin was the COVID related shutdowns. So many memories from here like bringing my kids for indoor Halloween trick or treating when they were little. Meeting family at the food court or just taking some time to browse the stores. It's strange to think of how much times have changed just over the past decade. What were once staples of everyday social life like malls are now obsolete relics of a bygone era. I am curious as to what will be in Lloyd's place when everything is said and done.
Really glad I took my kids there a few times while visiting Portland. The last time it was eerily dead. The kids thought it was spooky and took pictures. I just always loved the ice rink. We were starving and I thought we could find food. Not a sign of food in the whole place.
That’s what shook me the most about going through there was the empty food court. I went there I wanna say start of 2020 and even with the mall not doing well it was pretty packed in the food court area.
Breaks my heart to see Llloyd Mall shutting down. I was living in Portland from 92-2016 and I could walk though those halls with my eyes closed and tell you what stores were there. To be honest the bones look really good. I could easily see this repurposed as a corporate campus. I hope there is another act instead of a wrecking ball.
As an adolescent in the 70's I grew up at the ice rink at LC. Some of my favorite memories involve Ice skating at that amazing place! Some days the mall would be crowded and you could stand above the skating rink looking at everyone skate below because of the open-air design of the place.... It was a beautiful place and time in Portland history. I ❤ Portland ...🌹🌹🌹🌹
I remember knocking over a macys crystal display and briskly walking away to avoid being caught. No one to catch you, no macys, and the only crystal in sight is smoked out of a bubble pipe...
Incredible. I used to work in that mall in the 70’s. Went ice skating there. So sad to see this. Moved out of Portland 18 years ago. I can’t believe what a shithole Portland has become. And the electorate is so blind they’ll never elect leaders that will ever change it. They’re fine with letting the City of Roses decay into a garbage dump. Thankful Im now in Florida. I wish Portland the best. Praying for a restoration of that formerly beautiful city.
Graduated from Benson HS in 98 and this makes me so sad. I understand why it's happening, but the mall experience will be missed. Weirdly enough by where I live now, Washington Square is still a viable mall and is always busy
My "farewell walk" there was a few months ago after work when I was taking a shortcut and cutting through the inside to walk to the MAX and decided to stop at the pretzel place for some overpriced carbs since my bloodsugar was low. I relaxed for a few minutes and closed my eyes for a few short minutes as my bloodsugar balanced out, and before I knew it, both mall security and security from Barnes and Noble were in my face yelling at me and calling me a loitering homeless drug addict or something and told me I was trespassed. Showed them my medical bracelet and my receipts for $13 for multiple orders of pretzels and they were still tripping out. They "trespassed " me for 30 days, but I told them that I was trespassing myself out of there for the rest of my life because it is so lame 🤷
I appreciate a video with actual narration. I miss this mall. It was something special. I will (sadly) add it to Christown Mall in the '60's-70's in Phoenix and Paradise Valley Mall in Phoenix
The big anchor store next to the Marshall's was a Sears. Were Barnes and Nobles, and Ross still operating? Those were the last big stores remaining when I stopped by the food court for lunch a couple of years ago.
This is my favorite of your videos so far. The intro and outro shots are done very well. The piano music made me sad...are you trying to make me have feelings?? J/K
@@StevetheAmateurHistorian im missing the good days 😢 when we had toys r us, kb toys , bowling , malls to hang out of with friends all those things are going away and why? Imagine the children of today seeing this happening now makes you wonder what kind of future are they going to have when all the good things are gone
The skating rink at Lloyd center is unique to that Mall. I've never seen one in a Mall other than Lloyd Center. This is just so sad like a passage of time to hear this Mall is going away. As far as I'm concerned all these Malls across America. I feel the lack of business was intentionally allowed to happen. There is more behind this death of Malls than online shopping. There was no need for this Mall to end up like this.
Clackamas Had a pretty one with ice god's that would blow a huge icy breath on the skating rink! The Ferris wheel they added in ruined it then they tore the whole thing to put a theater in. It's really ugly there now with bad acoustics.
I recently took my son shopping at Clackamas town mall last week. It really is night and day. The place was so packed 2 days after thanksgiving, it was hard to even find parking. I also met my oldest son there a few days before thanksgiving. There are 2 places to eat there on the upper level as of 2025 November. The remodel did it no favors. On top of that, the wiffle ball court place looks nice but pretty empty. This was envisioned as some business center years ago. All this is not covid, or Amazon. Nope. I know the reason. Do you?
I haven't been there in years I think the last time I was there was with my friend and her daughter when she was a small child and this year her daughter graduated from high school so it probably has been fifteen years.
Steve did at the end. The rink is much smaller than when it was 1st started. My family used to watch the skaters as my mother was quite a skater in the early 1960`s. Shame to see such what could be a nice facility going away. Thanks for the tour Steve.
So sad to see these malls closing are used to live in Bend area and they were all going to promenades who in their right mind in the winter time wants to walk from store to store in Bend Oregon where there’s lots of snow and ice or in Portland where there’s lots of rain, I prefer the indoor mall by the elderly people do too that’s where they go to get their exercise
It's dead as many malls have become across the country, a dinosaur of the mid to late 20th century. Buying online has replaced the malls due to convienience of delivery to your doorstep, the ease of finding what you want from the comfort of home and much cheaper prices. Companie's don't have to pay mall high lease prices anymore to get your business. The state and federal government should turn it into public housing apartments for low income families and a place too get the homeless off the streets.Most people are homeless due to the lack of affordable living accomidations. This building has outlived what it was designed for, time to repurpose it without the cost of complete demolition.
Uh, no they are not. So many of those homeless scumbags MOVED to Portland to be homeless and do drugs because it's accepted. And they have ruined or abused neighborhoods and the city as a whole. You advocate rewarding them for that? Free housing? Free cars too? What else do you think they should be given as a reward for being worthless members of society?
sad...... went there as a child with my folks back in the 60s ,70s. sang there at Christmas of 76 with my swing choir ,in hi school. to bad it cant be converted into low income housing . i saw it happened in other states.
THE WHOLE CITY IS DYING UNDER THESE DEMOCRATS! HOW MANY OUT OF BUSINESS! HOW MANY MOVED OUT! EMBARRASSING TO BE A DEMOCRAT! JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW ANYONE COULD BE ONE!
Gangs of youth killed a man at the mall while they were “wilding” as they used to call it. About 10-12 years ago? I think that did it. I’ve been watching this city die for the last 15 years. You need to get the gangs and vandals under control. Window smashing and graffiti ALL OVER THE DAMN PLACE. Sick of it.
Your memory is skewed. Lloyd Center has been dying more and more since 2003. The majority of stores closed by 2015. The mall has barely been open for the last decade. Your memory is severely skewed of the mall. Something tells me those walks around the mall was more than three years ago if you think they were more stores. The last time I walked around the mall was in 2012 and there was nothing there. This was not caused by the pandemic. They even put in that marble staircase to try to increase the number of people that showed up but it didn’t work. Businesses stopped being willing to rent space there because of all the problems in Holiday Park. I have a lot of good memories in the Lloyd Center growing up but that doesn’t mean I’m going to get all weepy and lie about the history of the mall because it’s closing. Don’t blame Covid for some thing that had nothing to do with Covid.
Used to go there all the time in the late 80's and early 90's to Ice skate. Gonna take my farewell walk tomorrow. 😟
Yeah I want to say I went there more frequently with my mom when I was a kid back in the late 80s/early 90s. Hope you enjoy the walk through with how somber the whole thing is.
Nice I'm glad u captured the Holiday vibe in the Mall, definitely going to miss this place, Iconic peice of Portland , great video Steve ..Rest easy Lloyd thanks for the great times and memories, it was nice to have grown up in Portland during those days. This had all the feels at the end. 😔Happy Holidays to everyone here in Portland please be nice to one another. Thanks
Hey, Chris! ❤
I remember when it opened I used to ice skate there. The the ads said it never rains at Lloyd center.
I worked at Woolworths department store in 1961 through most of 1963. I remember it being an Open air mall. Also Nordstrom at the opposite end of Woolworths was just a shoe store. Had my first date at the ice rink. That first date is now my husband 58 years.
Lots of fond memories...
Christmas used to be so cozy throughout Portland, for me, from 2000-2008. I lived those 8 years like I knew this was coming. I mean, you can probably still see me out there somewhere and I left in 08 and moved to Aloha, Oregon. Lol.
I picked up some bad habits during that time but Portland was still super fun. Thank You for the video. ✌🏾
The area is "sketchy" as you say because the mall started dying during the pandemic as well as the office buildings in the area have most workers working from home and that has had a ripple effect in the surrounding neighborhoods.
As of 2015, this was still a very active mall and had tons of stores with very little vacancy. It started to go downhill around 2017 with some more vacancies and it increased over the years. Now around 20 stores remain. That includes food places as well.
Lloyd Center - Urban Renaissance Group a real estate company with offices in Portland, announced a partnership Monday December 20, 2021 with lending company KKR Real Estate Finance Trust to take ownership of the 61-year-old mall with the intention of maintaining retail, work spaces and ice skating. Urban Renaissance Group has offices in Portland, Seattle and Denver. The Lloyd Center total retail floor area is 1,472,000 sq ft. I’m praying 🙏🏻 that we can save the Lloyd Center. I ❤️that place. I was wondering years old when it opened up.
@@plantmaster3339 The mayor of Portland didn't help by refusing federal assistance in cleaning up the 'summer of love' that costed hundreds of millions of dollars. As long as we let them run the streets decent families will continue to leave as soon as they can get out and you'll get 'Hell Valley' USA ran by Biff.
Yes, the Nordstrom was at the Lloyd Tower end of the Mall. When they closed, that was sort of the beginning of the end, sadly.
R.I.P such good memorys walking thru it with my family.
It was so much nicer before the remodel. I grew up going to LLoyd Center in the 70 and 80's. I was open air, Beautiful at Christmas time. Lots of music and joy. Joe Browns has the best Carmel Corn... Good days gone by... Thanks for posting.
Man. I really have no words. This absolutely makes me sad. The Portland as I knew it, is gone😢another childhood landmark will be no more.
Yeah especially since they’re planning on just doing the same old dumb thing with the land. I’m sure people will live living in overpriced housing next to Holliday Park with all the druggies and shootings. I would love, if they did anything new to the land, if they made it a mix of places like a few small business, maybe some food carts, hangout/activity areas or something, at least doing something cool with the land if they’re gonna demolish the mall.
@@StevetheAmateurHistorian I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if they turned that land into condos! How infuriating!!!! If they did have small businesses and food carts instead it wouldn’t be half bad. It’s just disgusting how Portland is changing. The condos that are over off of 82nd in Foster down the street from Fred Myers used to be is all condos down that way. And where the Cooper penny used to be. It’s sickening! Seriously WTF?!?! When I saw your video posted I had to read it three times to make sure I was reading the title right. Lloyd center being a dead memory just floors me😡I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised.
Towards the end when you were in the parking garage I’m not certain, but I think Broudos the serial killer kidnapped a women there in the 60’s I think. Just had to throw that in there.
@@haumea420 oh yeah I forgot about that. I think the last woman he abducted was taken from that garage. Honestly, walking through there I felt like I could get abducted at any moment.
@@StevetheAmateurHistorian Right?! Once you started walking down there I was like oh shit?! I immediately thought of Brudos. The vibe down there has never been a good one.
I’m old enough to remember when the malls killed the downtowns. Weird that people are nostalgic for the commodification of the American experience.
I only lived in Portland for 4 years. Wow! One Saturday morning I was drinking coffee from Starbucks and I saw Tonya Harding skating on the ice. What a shame..
I used to do security in this mall. It's crazy how things have developed. I was there till July 2020.
My wife came 3 years ago saying "yay renovations! Can't wait to ice skate." Renovations were sadly a waste of time and money...
I’ve loved in the Northwest since 1998. Scratch loved, should have been lived but I have also LOVED a person (no longer together life happens) out here too. 😅. My grammar aside I am leaving Portland on Monday headed east to live with family. I have many fond memories of LLoyd Center mall. I got here in July 1998 and didn’t actually get down to Lloyd until the Christmas season that year. MAN what a fucking treat little bro, I saw the annual tree the first time and made it an annual tradition to go there every year around the holidays and look at the sights and lights etc. The very first thing I bought there was an original PlayStation (PS1). That’s how old I am. The food court every Sunday afternoon was always the place to be as well as the theaters. I saw the first X-men movie there as well as Mel Gibson’s The Patriot and the first Matrix. IN FACT The Matrix was THE first of many movies I saw there and who can forget the Phantom Menace? Star Wars Episode 1 1999? 99 was a great year for Movies. Seeing this made me nostalgic for those days. Sad to see what it’s become. I’m choosing to remember it as it was way back in the late 90s and early 2000’s. The decline really started in the mid 2010’s with the advent and acceleration of Amazon and online shopping. The pandemic was not the start of it, but it was the final mail in the coffin. RIP Lloyd Center, there are many who still do and always will remember you in your glory. Awesome video man!
I saw a mall turned into one bedroom suites, they were nice.
I've seen the mall empty so many times working till close at the movie theater, way after the stores were closed, so it's not that weird, but sad. I spent a lot of time there, remember when it was still open air and Christmas in the early 80's as a kid. Glad I took pictures of the theater before it closed, and the old rink (my first job) before it was remodeled. Plus I went to Benson so I was there pretty much every day regardless.
What an incredible mall! I love the grand spiral staircase with the tree and the ice rink. Steve, you put this together beautifully from beginning to end. Amazing, beautiful, and educational. ❤
Yeah it really is pretty nice inside, especially since they did a lot of renovation around 2014. I definitely think the semi-sketchiness of the area has really helped kill its business.
@@StevetheAmateurHistorian That's a heavy possibility.
The ice rink is much smaller than it was before the 2014-2016 renovations. I think I might have been there once since they shrunk the ice rink, and I had forgotten they had done that until I saw the overhead shot of it in the video. The stores on the north side towards Safeway are technically part of the original Lloyd Center. The Dollar Tree was once the affordable department store J. J. Newberry's.
Breaks my heart to see this. Loved the Lloyd center, took the kids skating their all the time driving in from Hillsboro. Worth the drive .
God I loved that Mall. I remember shopping there from the 70's thru the early 2000's. It was such a wonderful place, especially at Christmas. Many, many, fond memories there with family and friends.
I was just there a couple weeks ago and it's still going. Ice rink is still going and there's a handful of stores. Definitely empty and creepy but some of the stores are nice.
Thank you for this. So many childhood memories. And it goes way back in my family. My mom worked at the popcorn shop when it first opened. I will take one last walk before they close the doors. I miss old Portland so much : ( I wish this place would be turned into a museum of Portland.
Lloyd Center - Urban Renaissance Group a real estate company with offices in Portland, announced a partnership Monday December 20, 2021 with lending company KKR Real Estate Finance Trust to take ownership of the 61-year-old mall with the intention of maintaining retail, work spaces and ice skating. Urban Renaissance Group has offices in Portland, Seattle and Denver. The Lloyd Center total retail floor area is 1,472,000 sq ft. I’m praying 🙏🏻 that we can save the Lloyd Center. I ❤️that place. I was wondering years old when it opened up.
Many malls are closing all over the country. There's a German guy living in LA who does YT videos walking around Santa Monica and even Rodeo Drive showing hundreds of stores that have closed. But there are several proposals for razing Lloyd Center and redeveloping the area.
I had a store in LC back in 99/00. We had the Suncoast spot until SC took it over. Sears was next to Marshall's btw. But back then thing were hopping pretty good. A shame to see it so empty.
So sad it went from being a place i loved to go to, to a place i wouldnt be caught dead at! This was bc of gangs & theft first, then bc many stores left bc of the lack of ppl coming & spending money. 😢
I will always miss ice skating there and watching the people ice skate while I ate my food in the food court
20 years ago I worked in the Smoke shop, T. Whittaker Tobacco - it was fun with a dysfunctional family vibe among the mall employees who took smoke breaks in our store...and it was already starting the downhill slide with crime and fights on the rise. It'll be missed...
I went there in like 2015 or 2016. It has changed so much!
It really has, I remember going there about this time of the year in 2019 and there was about 100 people in the food court area, and during this visit I saw only 3 people and I think only 3 eateries were still open.
II used to be obsessed with the concept of Dead Malls, but the whole Dead Mall thing is hitting way too close to home with Lloyd Center. Once those anchors go there's no coming back. I remember the Dead Malls website always said that the last store to cling to life in a dead mall was the Radio Shack, but that's based on some old assumptions about tech. What is it now; the Game Stop? I had a feeling things were bad at Lloyd Center, but not quite *this* dramatically bad. It's one thing for Mall 205 to be dead; it was always a bit of an afterthought. For real and serious, no other standalone mall in this city has ever had a remotely decent food court since Clackamas did their remodel in the early 2000s and apparently went with the Tier Zero Food Court plan and tried for outparcel eateries. I was just there; their outparcel plan bombed spectacularly on the west end of the mall.
I first saw Lloyd Center as a visitor to Oregon in the 80's when it wasn't enclosed; I can still remember where our hosts parked the car and walked us into Meier & Frank. I was kind of baffled that people would walk outside in the damp in the winter to go away from the center of things, so I rejoiced when they enclosed everything. After I moved here, I used to walk Lloyd Center every week from about 2005-2012 era when it had a surprisingly decent food court, they hadn't ruined the rink yet, and they had every anchor store you'd expect except for J.C. Penney. I loved the odd underground parking situation on the north side; if you parked and walked through from the lower level you could pass by what was left of the Newberry store circa 2009, which by then was a Dollar General above ground. I can't remember when Nordstrom pulled out, but that really did accelerate the mall's decline. It was in that Nordstrom where I saw Catherine "Log Lady" Caulson shopping for shoes with someone I assumed was her daughter. It was a surreal moment; I am sure I was staring as she said something about wanting to see a shoe that was "more dressy" or "dressier". I imprinted on that mall so much that I was once hospitalized briefly at Legacy Emanuel and my partner was nice enough to bring me a ginormous cup of Paradise iced tea from the Paradise Bakery. It occurs to me that I have no idea where to get their cookies (or Bridge City) if Lloyd Centaur closes.
What angers me, though, is the full arc of this area. They moved heaven and earth and displaced so many working-class families of color for their frickin' Urban Renewal land grab, along with the hospital, demolished so many homes and businesses, and a relatively short sixty years later they have the audacity to float the idea of doing it all again? I've seen so many pictures of what was lost; they had at least better leave the structures in place as they try to figure out what to do with the building itself. I used to follow these developments a lot more closely but it stressed me out, so please forgive if I ramble and just miss major milestones.
As a postscript: Is there still a Bridge City downstairs at Pioneer Place Mall? Is Pioneer Place Mall even a thing anymore? :-o You can tell I avoid downtown. It shouldn't be incumbent upon me to basically have to learn martial arts to explore the city I chose to move to over 20 years ago, and yet here we are. ;/
It was kinda nice having Lloyd Center so close to Benson, back in the 70's. The cafeteria food was awful, so I'd sometimes go to the Hickory Farms to load up on the free samples for lunch. The ladies working there knew what I was doing, but I was polite about it, and we kept it our little secret so a horde didn't follow suit. I'll miss that mall. I hope the space is repurposed wisely.
That’s definitely a nice lunch break escape. As I heard they’re planning on repurposing it to residential and office space so, sadly, I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of it just becomes more overpriced “affordable housing”.
@@StevetheAmateurHistorian Corporate workplaces have a way of ruining things. So does affordable housing. At least in NY it does.
Lloyd Center - Urban Renaissance Group a real estate company with offices in Portland, announced a partnership Monday December 20, 2021 with lending company KKR Real Estate Finance Trust to take ownership of the 61-year-old mall with the intention of maintaining retail, work spaces and ice skating. Urban Renaissance Group has offices in Portland, Seattle and Denver. The Lloyd Center total retail floor area is 1,472,000 sq ft. I’m praying 🙏🏻 that we can save the Lloyd Center. I ❤️that place. I was wondering years old when it opened up.
Graduated Benson in 98 and I totally agree. After Freshman year we ate at Lloyd daily. My son is going to Benson in 2 years and it sucks he wont be able to experience the same thing. However now that it's remodeled he's going to have a lot of what we didn't
I miss going to Lloyd Center Mall as a kid but know it is a shell of itself and it is sad to see it as a dead mall
The times they are a changing. This was the granddaddy of Oregon malls. If it was not the first, it was sure the biggest mall in Oregon for a long time. So many memories.
My family used to go here in the 90's and early 2000's
This was one of the classyiest most upscale malls at that time.
Last time I went here was 2021 in December.
The Sees was still open then.
At one time this mall had 2 Gamestops, and a ToysRUs that was HUGE!
The Ice Rink was also downsized and used to be huge!
Was that perfect timing, or editing when you walked into the mall Queen's "Somebody to love" was playing.
As if the mall just wanted love 💔
That is just so incredibly sad!! I live in Beaverton and so don't get out to NE Portland a whole lot, and now knowing that one of the only 2 malls that I know of (is Mall 205 still open?) is heading to the chopping block, so to speak. I think I may have eaten at the Cadillac Cafe (I think it was the space with red leather/vinyl chairs and booths) at least once :-(
Thank you for sharing your perspective
Yeah it’s really unfortunate. I think the edge that small 205 has is even though there’s barely any businesses left in the mall person it has two successful anchor stores with Target and Home Depot and I know as of earlier this year all of Lloyd’s anchor stores are gone.
The mall closest to me, Washington Square, is still “rockin’ and rollin’” as far as business goes. Like any female, I like to shop 😛, and give quite a bit of business to JCPenney and Macys, both in person and online 🙂
Lloyd Center - Urban Renaissance Group a real estate company with offices in Portland, announced a partnership Monday December 20, 2021 with lending company KKR Real Estate Finance Trust to take ownership of the 61-year-old mall with the intention of maintaining retail, work spaces and ice skating. Urban Renaissance Group has offices in Portland, Seattle and Denver. The Lloyd Center total retail floor area is 1,472,000 sq ft. I’m praying 🙏🏻 that we can save the Lloyd Center. I ❤️that place. I was wondering years old when it opened up.
@@moonbeam7702 That's because it's in a affluent area. Tigard.
Fun vid. LC still has things to check out! Floating World Comics for one. Jim Brown's Carmel Corn is another. It's a dead mall compared to days of yore, but there's still events going on. Frankenstein Comic Swap was a blast last month. We took over both floors of the old H&M.
Those compressor controls needs to be saved
At 15:10 - the mini-vaccine hub that is temporarily closed is where J C Penny's once was. Right next to Marshall's.
Lloyd Center - Urban Renaissance Group a real estate company with offices in Portland, announced a partnership Monday December 20, 2021 with lending company KKR Real Estate Finance Trust to take ownership of the 61-year-old mall with the intention of maintaining retail, work spaces and ice skating. Urban Renaissance Group has offices in Portland, Seattle and Denver. The Lloyd Center total retail floor area is 1,472,000 sq ft. I’m praying 🙏🏻 that we can save the Lloyd Center. I ❤️that place. I was three years old when it opened up.
The store next to marshalls was the sears department store. Closed because their parent company sears holdings filed for bankruptcy
When they usually announce a mall is closing. Some tenants(usually national chains) bail out of mall early so it would make sense if some stores that were still open this year would have left by now. This looks like a nice mall, sad to see it kick the bucket. R.I.P
Was last there in 2010. Was so “thriving” then! Parking garage was always full. Loved shopping @ Nordstrom’s. Lots of energy…many shoppers. Enjoyed watching ice skaters! Tanya Harding skated there when she was young. All so sad😢
Tanya Harding skated at Clackamas Town Center mainly but did learn to skate at Lloyd Center. I only remember this because my friend growing up played hockey at Clackamas and she was there all the time
The final nail in the coffin was the COVID related shutdowns. So many memories from here like bringing my kids for indoor Halloween trick or treating when they were little. Meeting family at the food court or just taking some time to browse the stores. It's strange to think of how much times have changed just over the past decade. What were once staples of everyday social life like malls are now obsolete relics of a bygone era. I am curious as to what will be in Lloyd's place when everything is said and done.
Really glad I took my kids there a few times while visiting Portland. The last time it was eerily dead. The kids thought it was spooky and took pictures. I just always loved the ice rink. We were starving and I thought we could find food. Not a sign of food in the whole place.
That’s what shook me the most about going through there was the empty food court. I went there I wanna say start of 2020 and even with the mall not doing well it was pretty packed in the food court area.
Breaks my heart to see Llloyd Mall shutting down. I was living in Portland from 92-2016 and I could walk though those halls with my eyes closed and tell you what stores were there. To be honest the bones look really good. I could easily see this repurposed as a corporate campus. I hope there is another act instead of a wrecking ball.
5:14 yes, this used to be the Nordstrom entrance on the 2nd floor, which also led to the connected bridge over to the Lloyd Center Tower.
As an adolescent in the 70's I grew up at the ice rink at LC. Some of my favorite memories involve Ice skating at that amazing place! Some days the mall would be crowded and you could stand above the skating rink looking at everyone skate below because of the open-air design of the place.... It was a beautiful place and time in Portland history. I ❤ Portland ...🌹🌹🌹🌹
I remember knocking over a macys crystal display and briskly walking away to avoid being caught. No one to catch you, no macys, and the only crystal in sight is smoked out of a bubble pipe...
Incredible. I used to work in that mall in the 70’s. Went ice skating there. So sad to see this. Moved out of Portland 18 years ago. I can’t believe what a shithole Portland has become. And the electorate is so blind they’ll never elect leaders that will ever change it. They’re fine with letting the City of Roses decay into a garbage dump. Thankful Im now in Florida. I wish Portland the best. Praying for a restoration of that formerly beautiful city.
Moronic statement.
All cities go through changes.
LOL@ florida..... please
Graduated from Benson HS in 98 and this makes me so sad. I understand why it's happening, but the mall experience will be missed. Weirdly enough by where I live now, Washington Square is still a viable mall and is always busy
It's not dead yet... Still clinging on to life
My "farewell walk" there was a few months ago after work when I was taking a shortcut and cutting through the inside to walk to the MAX and decided to stop at the pretzel place for some overpriced carbs since my bloodsugar was low. I relaxed for a few minutes and closed my eyes for a few short minutes as my bloodsugar balanced out, and before I knew it, both mall security and security from Barnes and Noble were in my face yelling at me and calling me a loitering homeless drug addict or something and told me I was trespassed. Showed them my medical bracelet and my receipts for $13 for multiple orders of pretzels and they were still tripping out. They "trespassed " me for 30 days, but I told them that I was trespassing myself out of there for the rest of my life because it is so lame 🤷
I appreciate a video with actual narration. I miss this mall. It was something special. I will (sadly) add it to Christown Mall in the '60's-70's in Phoenix and Paradise Valley Mall in Phoenix
My daughter graduated from that Carrington College in October 2016. She took their dental assistant course. She is now an oral surgeon assistant 😊
The big anchor store next to the Marshall's was a Sears. Were Barnes and Nobles, and Ross still operating? Those were the last big stores remaining when I stopped by the food court for lunch a couple of years ago.
I didn’t get a good look at the dross but the Barnes and Noble was still open.
@@StevetheAmateurHistorian Oh cool. At least there's still some life in that corner of the mall.
Dang. 110million in debt
They should make this a museum for the old airport carpet
I could work with that.
Viva La Guardia!🎉!
I never thought I would see this. Wow! I have to show my son.
This is my favorite of your videos so far. The intro and outro shots are done very well. The piano music made me sad...are you trying to make me have feelings?? J/K
So when this mall going to finally close its doors
I’m not sure, I just know it’s being foreclosed on by the end of the year so at best it’ll probably only be open a couple more weeks.
@@StevetheAmateurHistorian im missing the good days 😢 when we had toys r us, kb toys , bowling , malls to hang out of with friends all those things are going away and why? Imagine the children of today seeing this happening now makes you wonder what kind of future are they going to have when all the good things are gone
23:01 It was JC Penney or might have been Sears
The skating rink at Lloyd center is unique to that Mall. I've never seen one in a Mall other than Lloyd Center. This is just so sad like a passage of time to hear this Mall is going away. As far as I'm concerned all these Malls across America. I feel the lack of business was intentionally allowed to happen. There is more behind this death of Malls than online shopping. There was no need for this Mall to end up like this.
Clackamas Had a pretty one with ice god's that would blow a huge icy breath on the skating rink! The Ferris wheel they added in ruined it then they tore the whole thing to put a theater in. It's really ugly there now with bad acoustics.
@@kylehill1523 I was just gonna say I thought Clackamas had one to
Hi do you know if the popcorn store is still open?
As far as I know it still is, it was open when I walked through there. As I understand it they’re going to keep that place open till the very end.
Johnny Rockets
Thank you, I knew the name of that spot and just couldn’t remember it.
It was actually called billy heartbeats a Johnny Rockets knockoff
Happy Birthday Steve
I recently took my son shopping at Clackamas town mall last week. It really is night and day.
The place was so packed 2 days after thanksgiving, it was hard to even find parking.
I also met my oldest son there a few days before thanksgiving.
There are 2 places to eat there on the upper level as of 2025 November.
The remodel did it no favors.
On top of that, the wiffle ball court place looks nice but pretty empty.
This was envisioned as some business center years ago.
All this is not covid, or Amazon. Nope.
I know the reason. Do you?
something to do with legal use of drugs openly and the crime in that area.
Coming from The Dalles wed go to Clackamas town center. We didn't feel safe at Clackamas mall.
The first anchor store to close was Nordstrom then Sears which was next door to Marshall's then Macy's
Do we get to see the ice rink?
I was there about year ago and it was busy. I'm surprised it's closing up. What a shame.
I haven't been there in years I think the last time I was there was with my friend and her daughter when she was a small child and this year her daughter graduated from high school so it probably has been fifteen years.
You didn't show the ice rink!
Steve did at the end. The rink is much smaller than when it was 1st started. My family used to watch the skaters as my mother was quite a skater in the early 1960`s. Shame to see such what could be a nice facility going away. Thanks for the tour Steve.
@@frederickbooth7970global warming is no joke
Tearing it down?
Who knows maybe it will become another “Rolling Acres”
So sad to see these malls closing are used to live in Bend area and they were all going to promenades who in their right mind in the winter time wants to walk from store to store in Bend Oregon where there’s lots of snow and ice or in Portland where there’s lots of rain, I prefer the indoor mall by the elderly people do too that’s where they go to get their exercise
Where is the share button?
It's dead as many malls have become across the country, a dinosaur of the mid to late 20th century. Buying online has replaced the malls due to convienience of delivery to your doorstep, the ease of finding what you want from the comfort of home and much cheaper prices. Companie's don't have to pay mall high lease prices anymore to get your business. The state and federal government should turn it into public housing apartments for low income families and a place too get the homeless off the streets.Most people are homeless due to the lack of affordable living accomidations. This building has outlived what it was designed for, time to repurpose it without the cost of complete demolition.
Uh, no they are not. So many of those homeless scumbags MOVED to Portland to be homeless and do drugs because it's accepted. And they have ruined or abused neighborhoods and the city as a whole. You advocate rewarding them for that? Free housing? Free cars too? What else do you think they should be given as a reward for being worthless members of society?
Wow. I moved out of Oregon in 2012 . I can't believe how dead it is but it does make sense with the plandemic...
We need to vote in favor of business this mid term! VOTE WITH YOUR BALLOTS! DON'T LET ANOTHER KATE BROWN 2.0 IN!
They have been saying that lloyd center will close in one year since 2015!!!
Also, my grandfather used to be night security there, and my mother and uncle will go in there and get to escape for free
sad...... went there as a child with my folks back in the 60s ,70s. sang there at Christmas of 76 with my swing choir ,in hi school. to bad it cant be converted into low income housing . i saw it happened in other states.
THE WHOLE CITY IS DYING UNDER THESE DEMOCRATS! HOW MANY OUT OF BUSINESS! HOW MANY MOVED OUT! EMBARRASSING TO BE A DEMOCRAT! JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW ANYONE COULD BE ONE!
Dude, you seem to be scared of your own shadow...
Gangs of youth killed a man at the mall while they were “wilding” as they used to call it. About 10-12 years ago? I think that did it. I’ve been watching this city die for the last 15 years. You need to get the gangs and vandals under control. Window smashing and graffiti ALL OVER THE DAMN PLACE. Sick of it.
People who are homeless, have a drug or alcohol addiction should be given a choice to allow us to help or get out! No other options available!
Portland is dying.
All because of a mayor and governor.
Mall are a dieing breed including strip malls
Well, bye.
Your memory is skewed. Lloyd Center has been dying more and more since 2003. The majority of stores closed by 2015. The mall has barely been open for the last decade. Your memory is severely skewed of the mall. Something tells me those walks around the mall was more than three years ago if you think they were more stores. The last time I walked around the mall was in 2012 and there was nothing there. This was not caused by the pandemic. They even put in that marble staircase to try to increase the number of people that showed up but it didn’t work. Businesses stopped being willing to rent space there because of all the problems in Holiday Park. I have a lot of good memories in the Lloyd Center growing up but that doesn’t mean I’m going to get all weepy and lie about the history of the mall because it’s closing. Don’t blame Covid for some thing that had nothing to do with Covid.
Welcome to keep Portland weird. To keep it weird you have to invent lies and all sorts of wild tales that make it hard to find the truth!