Posted
By Ken Storey
on Tue, Dec 29, 2020 at 11:36 AM
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Photo courtesy of Miosotis Jade via Creative Commons
While the outlets and Disney Springs have seen some return of pre-pandemic crowd levels, many Central Florida shopping centers continue to struggle. The story isn’t one exclusive to the region as the nation grapples with the glut of underused retail and aging malls. Now, across metro Orlando, even some of the most popular shopping centers are undergoing significant updates to appeal to the consumers of the twenty-first century.
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Image via Ken Storey
Signage inside the Festival Bay mall teasing the upcoming plans that were never realized. Instead, the mall became Artegon and is now home to Dezerland.
The evolution of shopping centers is nothing new for Central Florida. The last major economic recession was the final straw for many of the region’s already struggling malls, and within five years, malls across the region saw massive closures. The dominos began to fall in 2011 when the struggling eight-year-old Festival Bay mall announced it would be undergoing a remodel. A year later at the Oviedo Mall, which had faced its own lack of shoppers, one of the spaces earmarked for a restaurant become a beauty school. That same year across town in Ocoee, a major anchor announced it was pulling out of West Oaks Mall. Things didn’t look much better at the 16-year-old Seminole Towne Center, where Sears cut its store in half, closing the lower level.