How Can A Building Die?

Fort Crook Road has slowed down.

That’s not to say it’s died, but rather that it isn’t the street it once was. Once it was the highway that linked Bellevue to Omaha, now it is only the second-best route between those two point. Highway 75 has replaced it in all daily commutes; even the people that take Fort Crook only take it to Chandler, where they get on the new highway.

I was confused when my friend told me that there was a dead building on Fort Crook. “How can a building be dead?” I asked. He paused, then finally asked me, “Why don’t you find out?”

Today is the day. I stand in front of the Southroads Mall, remembering times in Boy Scouts when I would race my pinewood derby car on the bottom floor. Now the bottom floor is empty, the storefronts now bare spaces cleared of anything to sell. The JC Penney’s on the first floor is gone; now the space is empty, almost haunting in it’s lack of anything.

The entire mall feels like a place that I shouldn’t be, that nobody should be. It’s a place that feels like it explicitly detests visitors. I finally turn and walk out the front doors.

This place is indeed dead.