The slow motion death of Valley View Mall in Far North Dallas has been underway for years, with the recent removal of Brenda Stubel’s Sanger-Harris murals (pictured above) feeling like the latest last gasp of the shopping center and its long gone glory days. When I visited the mall a few months ago, the Cats had already come in and excavated much of the old J.C. Penney’s. Most of the artists who filled former storefronts with galleries have vacated, and the mall resembles an increasingly abandoned commercial ghost town.
Today, though, there was a new milestone, with a ceremony and everything. Demolition, pictured in the extremely anticlimactic video embedded below, has commenced, clearing space to build the shiny new Dallas Midtown mixed use development. It’s worth noting that, for now at least, several businesses in the old mall will remain open during construction, including the AMC theater, which, along with the Cinemark in Lancaster, has the cheapest movie tickets in North Texas. Enjoy it while it lasts.
Goodbye, again, Valley View.
If that puny demolition video puts you in the mood for some larger-scale destruction of man’s crumbling works, here’s a relevant section of Godfrey Reggio and Philip Glass’ 1982 art film, Koyaanisqatsi:
