There are some things in life you hope never change:
• Your high school – mine was torn down and rebuilt;
• Your childhood home – mine was sold, gutted and remodeled;
• And the mall you hung out at in your teens – mine is the Westminster Mall, and it closed in late October.
Opened in 1974 on the former site of a large goldfish farm, the mall had stores like May Company, Sears and Buffums.
By the mid-1980s, my friends and I were 15 years old and riding the bus to the mall. The original food court was in the center of the mall; it was a sunken level below the current first floor. My favorite was, and still is, Hot Dog on a Stick.
There were long ramps going from level to level. It’s where mall cops got angry at me and my friends for making paper airplanes out of bus schedules and throwing them from the highest ramp, trying to make them land on tables below.
At the east end of the mall was Sears, which closed in 2018. It’s where, in the mid-1980s, I got in trouble for stealing pieces of candy from the bulk bin and dropping them down the exposed escalator.
And in the parking lot is a furniture store. It used to be a Babies R Us and it’s where my wife and I registered for our baby shower.
But before that it was the UA Twin Cinema and it’s where I saw “The Empire Strikes Back.”
In the end, Westminster Mall became an empty shell of itself. Lawlessness echoed the deserted wings of the shopping center – that is, if you consider mall cops as “the law”.
It was a sideshow of oddities – people riding their bikes and scooters through the mall, playing basketball in the food court and training their dogs in the wide-open carpeted space.
Bert Velilla said he took advantage of the sparsely populated mall for a few years to train Dottie, his 4-year-old Jack Russell mix.
Velilla says he took the dog to the mall two or three times a week and would often do little shows for the shoppers. Velilla says Dottie liked the carpet. “It’s cool in the summertime and dry when it rains”, he said.
Shortly before the mall closed, out in the parking lot, Lynette Palfy arrived for Cinnabon. But while still outside, she learned it had already closed, causing her to laughingly grab the sides of her face, bend over and scream, “Noooooo!”.
While going down the escalator, Joey Wilson pointed out memories to friends. He lives in Salt Lake City, but he grew up near the mall. Wilson was in town to visit his mom and when he heard the mall was closing, he “wanted to come walk around one last time.”
Wilson said he worked at SunCoast Pictures for a couple years and remembers shopping at Miller’s Outpost for silver tab Levi’s jeans. He also reminisced about his first date, a $3 movie at the UA theater.
With boxes piled up around him, Suleiman Nuseibeh was relaxing on the public mall furniture in front of a shop he helped run: Last Chance Store. They sold overstocked merchandise, store returns and discontinued items at prices that got lower every day the items sat on the shelf.
Nuseibeh said the rent was “cheap and month-to-month,” so he knew the end was coming at some point. He said that he had no plans to relocate. “We’re gone, that’s it,” he said.
Brian Johnson said he used to visit the mall when he was younger.
“If it wasn’t for this mall, I wouldn’t have made the closest bond I’ve ever had,” he said of a friend he made while hanging out at Hot Topic and Spencer’s more than 10 years ago. “It’s gonna be a lost treasure for people who never got to live to experience this mall.“
Then there’s Alexis Malatesta, who loved the mall so much that she created an alter ego: Mall Manager Patricia Patterson.
She donned a wig that changed her hair from blonde to black, put on glasses and wore a business-like shirt, and insisted she was in charge of the shopping center. The week before the stores were scheduled to be shuttered, she held a rogue karaoke party to say goodbye to the mall.
She didn’t have permission. She just did it.
She set up karaoke equipment on the lower level in front of JCPenney, and when mall security arrived asking about the event, Malatesta’s husband offered them cookies. They agreed to let her stay until 7:30.
Malatesta admitted her love for the mall can seem odd to others, but added, “Love is scarce. If you can be vulnerable enough to love a structure, then, you know, that could give you the strength to branch out and love people as well.“
A karaoke party wasn’t enough for Malatesta; she also organized a candlelight ceremony on the mall’s last day of operation. She was dressed in all black and wore a veil while lighting memorial candles in front of the shopping center’s northwest entrance.
She welcomed about 50 people to her vigil, then she disappeared. She quickly re-emerged as her alter ego, Mall Manager Patricia Patterson, and told the crowd, “I know it’s the worst day of our lives collectively, but at least we’re together.”
