Incredible ABANDONED Mall Frozen In 1990

Since 1990, this urban mall has stood as a massive liability in the middle of a large city. After years of decline, it finally closed with an uncertain future ahead. For now, it sits completely abandoned and nearly entirely unchanged since it first opened. Join me as I take the first public look inside this infamous abandoned shopping mall in Hamilton, Ontario.

Chapters:
Opening - 0:00
Going Inside/First Level - 1:07
Mall's Beginnings/Anchor Store - 5:34
Building Reatail/Second Level - 7:48
The Decline - 10:24
Retail Collapse/Third Level - 13:02
Uncertain Future- 15:51
The Mall That Should Have Never Happened - 19:15

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Bright Sun Films 2023

Presented in 4K

[JeffGrosse-sb]

As soon as you went into the call center, I realized I’d been there. I went back in my photos and found two pictures from the day I went to that call center to observe employees taking calls so I could design their new case management app. I took screenshots of parts of your video and compared them to the couple I took. That was really cool to see. Thanks for posting it.

[devonkelly]

the transition at 1:02 was so creative. from being outside to inside

[martinnasom]

I remember visiting this mall near its end and saying to my then girlfriend that this place wont be around for long and that we should admire it before it becomes a memory of the past. Soon enough this day has came and I'm glad you made a video of this mall.

[oddlyoaktree]

Wow, this one hit me. This was the first video of yours where you went to a place I've been to A LOT... and boy was it a bit heavier watching this than I'd've thought... I went to High School right around the corner from this mall in a huge building that's also now abandoned, and my friends and I used to skip class to hang out here quite a bit. Later on, I worked at the call centre and, holy moly, you literally stopped at my old desk. 😳

My job there was to sell people insurance for their home furnaces as they were calling in for their broken furnace. I kid you not! People called in angry about the service guy not showing up, and I had to try and upsell them insurance... It was... well, it was a terrible job! 😬

While it's sad to see something so nostalgic go—you are totally right—it was so closed off to the rest of the neighbourhood, this building was always doomed. Honestly, I find it difficult to understand why people thought it would succeed. It's like Robert Moses-style thinking in the era of Jane Jacobs. The new building proposed has much better cohesion with the neighbourhood, and even reestablishes some of the lost streets from this development but as pedestrian-oriented streets!

...I will say though, the new proposal does have an abysmal lack of bell towers! 🙃

[the_argonaut]

Any day we get a BSF vid is a good day

[Alistair.Althea]

Honestly, as someone who worked in a retail store who had a normal thief who kept stealing HUNDREDS of merch (We couldn't do much except have someone descretly follow them and give CCTV footage to police who did NOTHING) having a wall of shame is rather brilliant.

[TheSpartan]

That pile of receipts! Old records always fascinate me. Meticulously recorded details of things that no longer are.

[time_to_teaparty]

Its such a crime that they demolished the old city hall. That was such a beautiful building.
I must agree that the inside of the mall looks pretty but its such a shame that so many nice buildings got sacrificed for such a failure of a project.

[ThomasFarmer]

The office section had to have been updated at some point after 2000. The computers are Dell Optiplex Series 2 Midnight Gray computers were manufactured between 2000 and 2004.

[dallindragon]

Every abandoned-type video I've seen is fascinating to me, but this one hit me real hard. Seeing you walk around by yourself, completely silent with no one around, looking at history...incredible.

[Aesurii]

The emptiness and near quietness is so insane, It’s crazy how it’s just left there to sit for years

[Trunp]

That water damage and peeling paint is relatively new. The mall was kept in shape very well until it closed 2 years ago.

[jeremy]

That was always my favorite part and why I dislike vandalism so much, the intact files and maps and little bits of life that got left behind and history from the people who lived it.

[MrHeyitsadrian]

Thank you for doing this man. I remember as a child visiting my grandma in Hamilton fondly and being in this mall as some of my earliest memories. It really seemed like the capital of the world to me from that perspective at that time.

[AlekWheeler]

What makes this doubly interesting is Jackson Square, right next door, is actually still doing pretty well

[b-rare]

I live in Hamilton. From what I remember that mall has always been slow. Surprised it took this long to finally close the doors on it

[declanlacey]

I seriously will watch any video you upload within hours, the production quailty is top notch. Keep up the great work Jake.

[austinyang]

It's eerie to think that while the rest of the world has moved on, there are tiny interior spaces that are closed off from the rest of society that have effectively become time capsules. No one has been there for ages, but everything inside is from the time it was sealed and forgotten. The modern tomb.

[fireshorts]

I used to work at the call centre just over a decade ago, though back then it wasn't called "Alorica". Pretty crazy to see how much they left behind. Lot of memories in that dead mall, been waiting for you to do this video ever since the place closed. Amazing work.

[andrewkowalczyk]

I have to feel bad for cities that gutted their downtowns for these sorts of malls, only to have the trend end in the last two decades and end up with these broken downtowns, where if they kept the original character and space that could easily be improved upon and brought into modern use. No way they could've known