The Colorful Past and Unwritten Future of Kirkland’s Totem Lake Mall – Part 1
Editor’s note: Brian Lutz, author of The Sledghammer – Version 2.0 blog, has agreed to share his research on the Totem Lake Mall with Kirkland Views. Brian has written this three-part article for us chronicling the mall’s past, present and possible future.
Whither Totem Lake Mall?
As you drive Northward through Kirkland on I-405, the Totem Lake Mall is a sight along the side of the road which is difficult to miss. From a distance, the Totem Lake Malls (the official name of the property) look like a couple of fairly ordinary suburban strip malls, one behind the other. In one corner of the lower mall, you have the somewhat garish storefronts of Car Toys, Famous Footwear and Ross. Scattered throughout the parking lot are several outbuildings which house Schucks Auto Supply, a Chevron station and a Key Bank branch. For the rest of the lower mall, plain white stucco is the order of the day, capped with a gray metal roof and a few fading blue accents. At the front entrance of what passes for a mall here at Totem lake, a large labelscar from the Gottschalks store which closed in 2004 remains visible.
To the right of the enclosed mall portion of the property lies the vacant former home of the mall’s Rite Aid store, which relocated to a newly constructed freestanding building a block away from the mall back in 2006. Elsewhere on the front of the mall, they never even bothered taking down the signs.
Even though the CompUSA at Totem Lake closed early in 2007 (one of more than a hundred to close at that time in a futile effort to save the company from oblivion), the sign for the store remains, as does the sign for the now closed Old Country Buffet. Aside from the three tenants mentioned above, the only two remaining stores in the lower mall at this time are Sleep Country USA and the Family Christian Bookstore, plus the occasional fly-by-night tenant who might drift in and out for a month or two on occasion.
If you happen to venture inside the mall, you will find a dimly lit and mostly abandoned corridor with nondescript benches straight out of the early Eighties scattered throughout, and claustrophobic low ceilings which are rather uncharacteristic of a typical shopping mall. Aside from the two remaining storefronts near the main entrance and a few scattered soda machines, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of shopping going on here. All but a couple of the stores are now vacant, and don’t look to be welcoming any new tenants anytime soon. Here and there, a few scattered labelscars of the businesses now departed such as Gottschalks, Jay Jacobs and Radio Shack remain, but aside from those the walls are covered completely in nondescript white. A sign at the main entrance asks shoppers to be patient while they remodel, but it would seem that the only remodeling in this place’s future would be coming from the business end of a wrecking ball.
At the upper mall, the picture looks a little bit better. Several larger stores remain in the upper mall, including Trader Joe’s, Guitar Center, Denny’s Pet World and Big 5 Sporting Goods, with several smaller stores filling some (but not all) of the spaces in between. Buried in a seemingly forgotten back corner of the upper mall is the Totem Lake Cinema, a shopworn 1980s movie theater which long ago stopped playing Hollywood films, but continues to show first-run Bollywood films on the weekends for the area’s large Indian population. The parking lot of the upper mall also has Wells Fargo and WaMu bank branches, although their placement seems to be something of an afterthought.
For the most part the upper mall is occupied for the time being, although that doesn’t change the fact that on the whole, the Totem Lake Malls have clearly declined from whatever glory days they may have enjoyed. Today, these malls are considered by many to be an eyesore, a monument in concrete and stucco to soulless 1970s utilitarianism. Globetrotting Internet celebrity Matt Harding of wherethehellismatt.com refers to the Totem Lake Mall as the most depressing place that he has ever been, saying “I think it might be some kind of gateway to the Netherworld.” It is clear that the present state of this mall isn’t benefiting anybody, but what is even less clear is what will be done about it. A complete redevelopment of the site has been planned for years now, but not a shovel of dirt has been turned on the property at this point, and aside from a site plan posted on the mall owner’s webpage, information on the upcoming redevelopment has been scarce to nonexistent.
In a way, it was almost by accident that I have found myself chronicling the history and the pending redevelopment of Totem Lake. As with any other seemingly random topic you might be able to think of, there are a surprising number of people on the Internet who take an interest in the the rise and fall of shopping malls, and over the years a number of sites and blogs have been devoted to the subject of dead and declining malls as the paradigm has shifted away from the large enclosed shopping malls of the sixties, seventies and eighties toward the open air mixed use developments that have largely replaced them in more modern developments. When I posted my initial profile of the Totem Lake Mall on my Blog about a year ago, it seemed that the redevelopment of the property was imminent, and I was interested partially in creating some sort of record of the mall before the inevitable demolition took place, and partially in having something to actually post on my Blog. Since that time, that particular post has proven to be the most popular item on my Blog by far, and has received over 7,300 views since it was written. In an effort to raise awareness of the situation at Totem Lake, I have put together this summary of the past, present and future of the Totem Lake Mall.
See: The Colorful Past and Unwritten Future of Kirkland’s Totem Lake Mall – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Posted by Brian Lutz on Monday, November 10, 2008 at 9:08 am
Filed under Retail / Shopping · Tagged with Development, History, Retail / Shopping, Totem Lake
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And with this great economy, what a wonderful time to borrow money to build even more retail stores. You can next take a look at Park Place. Somehow the local government and local developers have no clue how to keep these sorts of malls going, promising BIGGER is BETTER, but never delivering anything but vacant shop fronts and threats towards patrons and taxpayers. What a delight.
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In this economy I would be surprised to see anything built. This mall idea is a waste of time because it will be 10 years before anyone builds here without big incentives from local governments.
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How could they expect to fill this mall with any useful stores when Avalon Village in Juanita is still half unbuilt and half vacant after four years (the other half occupied by too many hair salons and sushi bars). And that new three story building on Brickyard Parkway at I-405 is gathering dust quickly with only one tenant.
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