Legacy Village is an anomaly (Apr 30)

Day 1-

Just a quick overview of what my project is on:

                I am doing a photojournalism project on two rather interesting malls and their surroundings. One is called Randall Park; the other is Euclid Square Mall. Both of these malls are dead. Randall used to be the biggest mall in America, and now it is empty. Euclid Square does not have any stores either, but it does have something else: churches. This mall has twenty-four separate churches as its tenants.

                I started on Monday photographing Legacy Village. These photos will become an introduction to the later malls. I spent the time looking for details that are both often unnoticed and contrast well with the other malls. Here are some of the things that I found:

• ·         Legacy Village is so opulent that there is a Charles Schwab on the second floor. Want to do your finances at the mall? Go right ahead.
• ·         There were signs surrounding the grassy area in the central square reading "New lawn, keep off the grass." Nice to see that Legacy can afford to corral its grass. Some of the other places get free vegetation, but not where it is wanted.
• ·         The escalator was under repair and was surrounded by a yellow banner that said "preventative maintenance." I will later compare this scene to the complete lack of any maintenance at the other malls.

I had done some previous scouting of the dead malls before, so it was a little funny to see how Legacy was in such good shape compared to the others.