Muncie Mall walkers looking for next steps after demolition

With the Muncie Mall now on a timeline for a near-full demolition, one group wonders what’s next for them.  IPR’s Daniel Huber caught up with the mall walkers during their morning exercise.

Transcript

An hour before the stores open, as hit tunes from the 1980s and 1990s blare on the speakers, people like Billie Sommers are starting their day with a nice walk around the mall.

“And I just happened to have my grandson with me today because he’s off work today,” she said. “But the rest of the week I’ll be by myself.

Sommers has been retired for about 15 years and has been walking around the mall ever since. Over time, she saw the place change.

“People are doing so much online shopping and ordering,” she said, “that I think a lot of retail stores are struggling.”

She says she is “not happy” about the mall’s demolition,“…but I can understand if I owned the property, that’s probably how I would feel too. We’ve lost so many businesses.”

When it comes to alternatives, walkers are looking at the downtown YMCA, Ball State University’s Jo Ann Gora Student Recreation and Wellness Center, and if the weather is nice, exercising outside. But for people like Dwight Smith, there is nothing quite like the Muncie Mall.

“There’d be 100 people at least walking,” he said, “And you could see friends, and it was just a good place to come and see people and talk to people.”

Walkers say there are benefits to the mall. It’s an enclosed space, which means it’s cool in the summer and warm in the winter.  And it’s affordable.

“There’s no place to go inside where you can really dedicate walking. I mean, you can go to Menard’s or Meijer or someplace like that and walk, but not the way you can here, unobstructed, and you know, where you can set your own pace like that. So, I don’t know, that’s probably the only place left.”

In the meantime, the mall will still be a place for walkers to show up before it goes down.