Century III FINALLY meets it's date with the wrecking ball.

[TheFugitive]

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.

[TheFugitive]

And the trespassing continues even as they are tearing it down.

https://www.wtae.com/article/century-iii-mall-demolition-trespassers/60349428

[TheFugitive]

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

[TheFugitive]

Even as it's being torn down trespassers STILL continue to break into Century III to shoot video.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/five-people-arrested-accused-of-trespassing-at-century-iii-mall/ar-BB1njG5y?ocid=BingNewsSerp

This time the "shooting" could have been literal.  Four adults and a juvenile broke in at 2AM on Wednesday to shoot video for a Facebook livestream.

Since the mall has no power they brought their own light, in the form of a flashlight that was mounted to a loaded hand gun!

Having seen the gun in the video the police opted to wait until these people left the mall and got back in their car before making an arrest.

The driving force behind every break-in at the mall has been somebody's desire to become an internet video star.

Maybe if you are going to do illegal things it's best not to livestream them on Facebook.

[TheFugitive]

Here is an investigative piece from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.  It appears that whatever the reasons behind the ongoing urban decay saga of Century III they are not the result of the owners of Moonbeam Capital Partners being short on cash.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/editorial-century-iii-investigation-casts-light-on-blight/ar-BB1oGN07?ocid=BingNewsVerp

On the contrary it appears that they were living it up even as they dumped all of these problems into the laps of the local taxpayers.

[TheFugitive]

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is kicking in some cash to expedite the mall's demolition.

https://patch.com/pennsylvania/pittsburgh/pa-pitching-aid-century-iii-mall-demolition-effort

Sadly typical of these situations.  Private owners milk the last dime out of the dying mall and then taxpayers get stuck with the bill to deal with the fallout.

Given how bad the situation got at the Dixie Square Mall they no doubt feel that they have no choice.

[TheFugitive]

A little Century III nostalgia courtesy of WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh.

https://www.wtae.com/article/cramped-parking-crowds-century-iii-mall-1994/63058107

I'm a bit surprised to not see myself in this report.  I was a frequent visitor to Century III at that time.

What a difference thirty years makes.

[TheFugitive]

With $1 million in additional taxpayer funding safely in the bank, the ETA for Century III being completely gone is 12 to 18 months.

https://www.wtae.com/article/century-iii-mall-investments-pennsylvania/63171709