It's official. The demolition of the huge, rotting mall on the outskirts of Pittsburgh is finally getting underway.
https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/first-phase-of-demolition-set-to-begin-at-century-iii-mall/
The mall's owner, Moonbeam Capital Partners, was finally forced by a judge to begin demolition or risk forfeiting their property to West Mifflin Borough so that they could demolish the nuisance mall.
I spoke with my son-in-law who lives in West Mifflin and he is overjoyed by this news. The empty mall was just deteriorating and becoming a magnet for urban explorers, drug users, squatters, and various criminal elements. It was draining a lot of resources from their public safety bureaus too as just in the past year they've had a fire and they've had to arrest dozens of trespassers (one of whom suffered a serious spinal injury after falling through the roof). Famously the Dixie Square Mall in suburban Chicago became this sort of nuisance and remained that for decades before finally being torn down. Nobody in West Mifflin wanted to see a repeat of that.
Century III will live on in the fond memories of a lot of Pittsburghers.
And the trespassing continues even as they are tearing it down.
https://www.wtae.com/article/century-iii-mall-demolition-trespassers/60349428
An update with some aerial video of the demolition in progress.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/century-iii-mall-demolition-continues-see-the-view-from-sky-4/ar-BB1lJ9r6