Dead Malls Season 6 Episode 9 - Galtier Plaza

Neatly tucked into St. Paul, Minnesota lies the Galtier Plaza, a failed downtown luxury mall of grandiose proportions. Once thought to be the perfect oasis between the cities skywalk system, office towers, several residential towers and of course the Galtiers very own twin condo towers atop.. Galtier Plaza just never worked out.. Overbudget, overly complicated, poorly planned, and poorly timed, the mall now sits still open, as a ghostly reminder of what once was…

~ vaporjazz playlist this videos music comes from ~

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[colleenoneil]

Thank you for posting this. This mall was in the 1991 movie “Drop Dead Fred” with Phoebe Cates. My sister and I were extras in the movie, so we spent several full work days there. It was a beautiful mall at the time, and I’m glad it’s being used for apartments!

[almond]

The fact that Episode 6:9 falls on 4/20 is LEGENDARY!!!

Keep up the great work!!!

[HeartSleevesMusic]

Back in the 90s, my dad took me to Galtier Plaza many times to get lunch or see a movie.
I could be totally wrong, but I swear there was a mini golf place on the 3rd floor at one point. Or at least something active? I remember I loved going up there with the tall windowed ceilings, neon lights, and so many plants EVERYWHERE.

I remember eating at the food court several times. On the way in or out of the building, I remember a clothing store and a jewelry/accessories store. I feel like there was also a big fountain at one end? Multiple levels of nooks with tables and chairs or benches with great views.

The first renovation I can recall was in the early 2000s, and the second floor was already pretty much converted into apartments or private offices. There were for sure no more plants! Most of the levels were either vacant or inaccessible to the public. The food court moved to street level and consisted of a Subway, a pizzeria, and maybe one or two others. If you continued down the hall into the Plaza proper, there was a more upscale sit-down restaurant. The street level of Galtier was already super empty as you saw it in your 2023 visit. The YMCA was open/accessible from the second floor. Now nothing is in there but 80s/90s nostalgia. It's pretty surreal to have watched these changes happen in real time since I was around 10 years old!
Thank you for this video and the trip down memory lane ❤

[amydaisy]

Wow that place has really beautiful architecture! It would be really cool to live there. But the elevator was kinda scary...if you push a button to go up and it takes you down😬.

Thanks for another great episode! 😊 Love the music, it was perfectly chosen.

[innercityprepper]

I used to go to movies here in the late 80s and early 90s. A forgotten gem! I also had friends that lived in the tower.

[JenniferinIllinois]

Looks like they wanted to keep those dead mall enthusiasts from using their bathrooms. 🤣🤣🤣
Love the asthetics of this place. Would love to have seen the neon on. Oh well.
Oooo, looking forward to more Illinois dead mall goodness. 😉

[Ndsl]

Great video. I'm too young to remember this mall when it was new, but I did eat at the food court a couple of times. I believe during the Cray years there was a preparatory school occupying part of the first floor. There are a lot of places like this in Downtown St. Paul, and even more in Downtown MPLS. Back in the '70s and '80s a lot of our downtowns were bulldozed and they built these malls meant to be interconnected by skyways. In the two cities you can walk for horus in this liminal dystopian maze of old '80s archietcure with old storefronts-turned office space and bland hallways. It can get depressing. Other buildings I would describe as failed malls in St. Paul are the World Trade Center (now Wells Fargo Place), Town Square, and Alliance Bank Center, but that dead mall aesthetic is everywhere in our seemingly endless skyway system. The same is true for Minneapolis, which has Gavidae Common, IDS Center's crystal court, Northstar Center, and Baker Center. The Skyway system is honestly a really cool place to explore and I sometimes go there on cold winter days and just walk around. Some areas can be a bit sketchy though, as you may imagine.

PS - nobody has ever called it Cray Plaza. It is, always has been, and always will be Galtier Plaza.

[JoshYT]

I still love that opening intro! It really sets the dying dream like atmosphere this place can provoke. I wonder if the neon on the preserved cinema sinage still works? I wonder when they last turned it on 👀 Amazing adventure though!

[DrTopGun]

An excellent documentary, man, of this forgotten jem of the 80s. Perhaps, this building will be great for a reboot of the firm with an 80s vibe. Maybe? Anyways, keep it up, man, good job. 😁🖖🤜🤛👍

[mallrun]

13:50 I worked in downtown STP in 2017-2018 and would walk through here quite a bit. Still a few services open on the second level. A colleague spoke highly of the mall during its heyday and she said there were some desirable stores. I believe claimed there was a Banana Republic there and other stores of that nature, but I’m speaking to a memory of a memory at this point!

[njt]

I live right next to this building now. It's fun to just walk around the area. I do remember going there once as a kid.

[seabee]

Wow. That was a really nice looking mall. I love the neon clock. You always pick the best music to fit these malls.

[colinray]

Wow incredible scale and style it makes me want a time machine to see day one in person. Excellently covered CDogg 👏

[bradyeplaysIndieHorror]

That theater marquee sticking out looks so out if place in the giant white angular building. I assume it used to look better when all the other bells and whistles were all around it.

[therdrm]

I lived in one of the Galtier Apartment buildings from 2019-2021. They connect directly to this mall. If you take those golden elevators up to the very top floor of the mall, there is a small arcade with machines that still (sort of) work. They were all on free play when I lived there. Even a pinball machine. Not sure if they are still there in 2024.

[namewithheld]

I was kid when this opened and we went to see it. It just never took off. Looking back it was an overreach. There was a shopping center a few blocks away that had anchor stores and a big food court. Couldn’t compete. In my 20s I worked a few block from here and used the Y. The problem with downtown was everyone left after 4:00pm. It was always tough for St. Paul to get anything happening downtown. Minneapolis at least back in my day, people went out after work.

Note: I haven’t been to St. Paul in 25 years - so no idea what’s happening today.

[noahvoris]

Great video as always North! You bring such immersive storytelling and much needed attention to these places!
Next mall: Village Square Mall in Effingham?

[ryudex]

I grew up near Railroad Island and my crew and i would walk downtown to Galtier to hit the arcade, movies or mini golf. Haven't seen this place in ages; its sad now.

[VegasInsight]

New to your channel.

Enjoyed your visit to Galtier. I assume somebody has told you we pronounce it gall-tier, two syllables. It happens, my buddy and I mispronounced Sepulveda Boulevard the entire time we were in Los Angeles years ago. I only learned it from hearing it discussed after our trip on TV somehow. I also watched your Southdale video last night. I'm sure somebody told you how to pronounce Edina. The old Moviephone service also mispronounced it, but in a different way than you did.

All that nonsense aside, it was a blast seeing current Galtier Plaza. I grew up in the north suburbs, so I had very limited experience with downtown St. Paul most of my life. I would find my way to downtown Minneapolis far more often. Galtier is similar to the old City Center in downtown Minneapolis. They didn't look alike, but they were both three-level retail centers with all the trappings, and probably offices higher up at both. (Can't recall with certainty.) City Center is likewise vacated by retail, with perhaps one or two exceptions. There's still a restaurant at the street entrance to CC, and maybe a Fed Ex Office joint inside on the main level. But the second and third floors, once packed with retail shops and a food court, are now quiet, and probably converted to office use. Hard to tell, and it has been years since I entered CC.

My very limited memories of Galtier: At some point in the early 90s there were a handful of local comedy clubs around the Twin Cities named after a local comedian. Scott Hanson's Comedy Club had a location in Galtier, I recall. Don't know why I remember the venue, but I went to a show at SHCC, and I'm quite certain it was at Galtier. In the late 90s I believe Galtier was where I went to a bar/nightclub that catered to the Hispanic crowd. I worked with a guy who also managed the venue on weekends, and I along with a handful of co-workers hung out there one night. I learned that night I was a gringo, and our group of 4-5 were the only 4-5 gringos at the location. It had a good crowd, and there probably weren't a lot of places catering to the Hispanic crowd at that point, so it wasn't surprising it was popular.

In the early 90s I would occasionally find my way to downtown St. Paul, it was the closest epicenter to my western Wisconsin college. We would travel the skyway system between downtown retail hubs, and there were a few, all of which are now dead. Town Square was famous because it had an indoor park area and was home to our MN State Fair carousel for more than a decade. Somehow the carousel, a fixture of the state fair, was sold and was going to be removed from the fairgrounds, never to be reassembled. I think the antique horses of the carousel were being sold individually or something crazy like that. I was young and not tuned into local news, but I heard enough about it to know there was a local campaign to save our fair carousel, or something corny like that. It worked, as the carousel was somehow relocated to Town Square. Wikipedia tells me in 2000 it moved out to St. Paul's zoo, which I never go to, but has rides as well as animals, and it remains there to this day.

The third place I remember well is the one with the name I can't remember. Google tells me it was Minnesota's World Trade Center, now Wells Fargo Place. At the street entry was Heartthrob Cafe. There's not a lot of great photo and video of this place that I can see, but a little. Essentially it was a 50s-themed restaurant. Workers rollerskated, menu had to have big milkshakes and burgers, I'm sure. It had a separate bar area that was 21+. We went there a few times as college students before we were 21. It was probably 30-40 minutes from our campus. Silly that we drove that long to go to a downtown St. Paul restaurant that appealed primarily to teenagers. We were dumb.

Down the hall you reached the multi-level shopping. Somewhere I have a VHS tape that has interior shots of this mall. We were there on a weekend, October 1990, and it was super busy. 15 years ago or so I ventured downtown with one of my college buddies to look at it. All the retail was offices overlooking the central court of the development. Google images suggests it has a big glass dome over it.

Online shopping has hurt malls, we all know that. Downtown shopping districts are more challenging than ever. We must have more homeless people these days. Sure, the homeless population is more visible, by design, it seems, but the problem only grows with each passing decade, visible or invisible, I believe. A downtown retail area is a hard sell today because of those things. People go to malls and retail less, overall, and groups that may congregate downtown don't make it appealing to visitors who live downtown.

Had Galtier Plaza been a bigger success, had it lasted longer as a dining and retail destination, it would still be empty today. I'm a bit surprised that all these retail sectors, as well as a few comparable spaces in Minneapolis, died before Amazon and the internet sucked the life out of malls. Online shopping wasn't a thing, for the most part, in 2000. You'd think they'd have been thriving around 2000 instead of near death.

Thanks for this trip down memory lane. I look forward to checking out a few more of your videos in the weeks to come. It has been years since I pounded the downtown St. Paul pavement. I wouldn't be able to tell you where the big Macy's use to be in St. Paul, or remember a lot of geographic spots. So much has changed, but I could still find my way inside Galtier, and maybe Town Square and the World Trade Center's mall area. I feel like I need to see them one more time.

[TheCubeTube]

Awesome video North! I bet it was awesome back during whatever you would consider to be its “heyday.” Such a shame it never took off as a mall…