I remember when Landover Mall went downhill. It was mostly due to gang presence who scared off other shoppers, as I recall.
I remember activists complained to the Lerner Corporation that they let the mall fall apart due to not.providing adequate security. But they had nothing to say about the youth gangs who created the big need for security in the first place.
Anecdotal evidence about Landover Mall is that stores there didn’t carry the same merchandise as other stores in the same retail chain. This issue caused some people I know to shop elsewhere, as it seemed the stores were gearing merchandise to other ethnic groups.
And I recall activists saying that Lerner didn’t do enough to recruit high end stores to Landover Mall. Sad to say, major retailers pulled out of that mall one by one. And decision makers of major chains decided to locate elsewhere.
When we hear so much about mall violence in recent weeks, it makes me think of why Landover Mall went under. There were critical numbers of menacing youth at Landover whose presence intimidated shoppers.
There were other indicators of crime as well. I remember the movie theaters seats there were frequently ripped up with all of the stuffing torn out of the seats. Entire rows of seats rocked back and forth because the bolts attaching the seats to the floor had been sheared off. Such experience in a movie theater makes one think twice about ever going back to that place.
The malls in Austin, TX are doing fine. The oldest one, Highland, has been over run with an unsavory crowd. During high school UIL track and field team contests, obama sons (and daughters) hang out there and cause more than the usual problems. The mall wanted to shut down during those dates but the lib treehugging city council cried racists and ordered the mall to stay open.
Landover Mall was in thug central, filled with black feral urban youth. Most of the “shoppers” were, or acted like they wanted to be perceived as, violent criminals. In gun-controlled Maryland, it was a particularly unsafe place to be.
It no longer exists.