"Yes, do you have a Miss Piggy?"
Posted on 09/25/2010 9:52:41 AM PDT by JoeProBono
HARVEY, Ill., Illinois officials announced plans to demolish a suburban Chicago mall that served as a set for a famous scene in the 1980 film "The Blues Brothers."
Gov. Pat Quinn said Thursday the state is receiving a $4 million federal grant to demolish Dixie Square Mall in Harvey to make way for redevelopment to revitalize the area, the Chicago Tribune reported Friday.
The mall, which has been vacant for more than 30 years, served as a filming location for the mall car chase scene in "The Blues Brothers."
"Dixie Square has been a place that we know has to change fundamentally," Quinn said. "I look forward to the day real soon when we will have this site cleaned and available for development.
"This is a huge investment in cleaning up Dixie Square. For years and years it has been an eyesore," he said.
Local officials have expressed hopes of replacing the Dixie Square Mall with a new shopping center, but no plans have been finalized.
Officials said the demolition is scheduled to begin in November and will last for about four months.
“They broke my watch!”
“Pier One Imports...........”
Can you name just one?
Interesting.
ping
Maybe I missed it somewhere in my reading.
I used to live near the Omni and would go down there with my little girl at the time. Lots of high end shops but no shoppers. It was a strange location for a mall, though.
Along the lines that I was thinking. Thanks very much.
"Yes, do you have a Miss Piggy?"
What are they going to put there instead? A gigantic ACORN office or LINK card distribution facility? It's not exactly prime real estate anymore.
The reason the mall closed in the first place is because Harvey (and the general area around it) was allowed to become an urban war zone:
In the meantime, crime was becoming an increasing problem in the mall's town of Harvey, a failing, poverty-stricken suburb 20 miles (32 km) south of Chicago. Several major incidents occurred near or at the mall itself. In November 1972, a young woman was fatally shot near the mall in a botched robbery attempt. On April 20, 1973, another person was shot in a robbery on the mall property itself. In July 1973, a teenage girl was lured away from the mall by three other teenage girls, and strangled to death.
The whole thing was bizarre. It was like a haunted house. It is on the north end of downtown Miami right on Biscayne Bay but you also have the expressway going to Miami Beach there. Weird. The area went downhill in late 1980s. I think oddly when the Feds really cracked down on drugs, Miami’s economy imploded.
There is a documentary called Cocaine Cowboys that documented Miami rise as a cocaine hub, the crime and then the financial crash caused by better enforcement.
The Omni is right next to the Miami Hearld newspaper HQ that looked out on Biscayne Bay. The Hearld appears to be cutting more and more staff. They are dead meat like most newspapers. I do not live down there but follow some of the news on the web.
The newsroom was in a Kurt Russel movie where his girlfriend gets kidnapped and he is a reporter or something. The movie was called The Mean Season.
Great movie and gret chase scene besides Steve McQueen’s Bullit movie ! Funny the movie was filmed after the original Mayor Daley went for a dirt nap !
You must not have the unabridged version. If you can find one, check page 1,364, paragraph 3, line 44. Just in case, you might not have one because bleedin’ heart liberal Democrunts are the folks that have this version on the living constitution.
I had no idea that place was still standing. I’m shocked they hadn’t already knocked it down and built something else.
Let people get their own little piece. Mallspechte.
I owned a 1974 Chrysler Newport that was as indestructable as the Dodge in that movie. I used to drive that car through snow drifts.
Remember the mall from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure? That mall was one I went to a lot at the time. A year or two ago we were in that part of Phoenix and the kids and I stopped in. It was so depressing to see this shell of a mall.
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