The Shoppes at Carlsbad

This shopping center, I use the term loosely, is an embarrassment to the City of Carlsbad. Vast number of stores are vacant with few quality ones left. Now that the proposed shopping center at the strawberry fields has failed to be approved by voters, it is incumbent on Rouse Properties and the City of Carlsbad to turn this into the gem it could be. I’m disgusted that wasn’t done when Westfield owned it. The time to fix that is now!

I went to this mall last night. The new area with the restaurants, Regal cinema, and 24 Hour was buzzing with activity. It’s a pity, though, that the rest of the mall is being allowed to rot. I walked into the mall to get around to the other side to find the cinema entrance. Most of the shops are vacant. Pat & Oscar’s closed over four years ago and the store still sits there; clearly unused ever since. At 6pm on a Saturday night, the entire mall was almost completely vacant. I didn’t see even 10 people in the whole mall. It’s a ghost mall at this point — ready to be torn down. I know why Westfield sold it off rather than invest in the planned renovation that was cancelled. What I don’t understand is why anybody would have bought it.

This is a crappy mall that mostly has Hispanic shoppers. The anchor stores are Macy’s, JC Penney, and Sears. The only reason I came here was to shop at Macy’s. I don’t think I will return.
I agree with another poster that this place is depressing.

God, this place has become depressing.
I’ve never been a huge fan of the mall. Ever since I was a kid, I was dragged through the doors, fighting holiday crowds, visiting place after place that all look alike, and rolling my eyes at anchor stores that hadn’t changed their interior designs since first opening. Hell, up until the day they closed shop, May Company still had most of their original furnishings and décor.
I remember when they shut the whole place down for a huge remodel, there was a grand reopening with new lighting, redone floors, a beautiful water sculpture, and a pretty cool Rube Goldberg Clock. Even James «Scotty» Doohan was on hand to sign autographs, as this was 10 years before they shot what was left of him into space. For a time it was nice again, cool even, but they never did anything to maintain or keep it up, only removing bits and pieces that broke down and decayed, leaving an ever so emptier shell in their wake.
Nowadays, probably about 1 out of every 4 shops are closed, the iron gates down in front of black sheets to keep people from seeing the dust and debris strewn about inside; most only serving as storefront advertising for other failing shops elsewhere in the mall. Orange Julius, KB Toy Store, The Disney Store, and the old arcade are gone. The only bookstore around is a Crown that sells used selections with crumpled, torn covers and old titles that couldn’t even sell at the outlet; this too will soon box up and move on, a traveling book mart akin to the fairs at Elementary Schools. And the only things that seem to ever survive are the bright jewelry stores that buy scrap gold for nothing and sell it back for a king’s ransom and the clothing stores that constantly spring up for a year or two before making way for another round of the latest in tween fashions next door.
For a time, it looked like new life was about to be breathed into the old mall, as one end was demolished and revitalized as a luxury theater, 24 hour fitness, and a small line of tasty shops and a coffee bar. But, even these new spots look down on the rest of the mall, like something out of a dystopian future novel, where the wealthy, upper class, wall themselves off from the vermin in the lower districts; you have to exit the slums completely and walk all the way around to get to anything shiny and new, there’s no way to get there from the inside.
And so, the rest of it is left to rot. Every month, another store boards up. Every once in a while, a new place tests the waters, thinking the theater may give them some desperately needed foot traffic, but they invariably fold within a season. Christmas fills the place every year, but it isn’t enough to keep everything afloat. And the aforementioned anchor stores still retain their aging décor, refusing to move out of a time that has left them behind, slowly wallpaper-​peeling and carpet-​fraying at the edges as holes in the ceiling panels grow steadily bigger and they trudge ever closer to death.
Again, this place is depressing.
The only thing that ever brings us here are the occasional gift card and the sudden need for a birthday gift that leaves too little time to wait for it to come through the mail after buying it online. There are no worthwhile restaurants, no kitschy stores with items you can’t find easily elsewhere, all the cool sculptures are packed away, replaced by rickety kid’s rides that never work and hucksters selling made for TV crap. Pretty much the only thing keeping this place afloat is nostalgia and that’s quickly fading as every patron from its past are slowly dying off.
And it is that nostalgia, coupled with the fact that this place is typically so empty (even on a weekend) that it generally is a pleasant and comfortable place to stroll, that keeps me from giving The Shoppes at Carlsbad the 1 star it truly deserves. Even while eating at the grime crusted McDonalds that seems to double as a homeless shelter on the lower levels, I can’t bring myself to give it anything lower than the just below average that I am.