'Mall Rats’ artist group helps reimagine vacant space in Asheville Mall
By Laura Hackett
May 23, 2025 at 12:25 PM EDT
While big box stores are on the decline, there’s a lot of creative new ventures stepping in to fill the vacancies at the Asheville Mall.
Erik Mace is a member of the Asheville Mall Rats, a group of artists who are obsessed with malls.
“We talk about malls all the time and how we all have different experiences with them, but there is a shared kind of language and a shared nostalgia,” Mace said. “It’s a place where you feel like you can discover something either about yourself or about the community.”
Nationwide, the number of malls is almost certainly "on the decline." The number of malls in the United States dropped from 2,500 to approximately 700 over the last 40 years, according to Atlas Obscura. Some closed malls sit abandoned, while others have been demolished entirely to make room for a new kind of development.
At the Asheville Mall, there have been some setbacks – like the loss of Sears in 2018 and the imminent closure of JC Penney. But Mace and his fellow Mall Rats say they see an opportunity to help reinvent the space.
“It's just a perfect time to reflect a little bit on what the history of the mall was … now's the perfect time to reimagine that,” he said.
It’s not just Asheville playing with the concept of malls. In Sumter, S.C., a charter school has moved into an old Macy's. In Santa Ana, Calif., developers are turning sections of the mall into housing. In Quincy, Ill., an old mall is home to a cancer and surgery center.
And here in Asheville, the Mall Rats are thinking about the mall as a creative space. They’ve hosted dance events and fashion shows at the mall. And now this weekend, the group plans to turn a blank hallway into an art exhibit.
“We're looking at the mall as a canvas and what can we put in it,” Mace said.
The parking, plentiful air conditioning and ADA-compliant infrastructure are also important, Mace continued. It means people from all walks of life can be included.
Liz Williams, another Mall Rat member, is asking anyone – and they mean anyone – who wants to share their art, to bring it to the corridor next to JC Penney on May 24 as part of the group’s “You Are Here” exhibit. The event invites people to bring their ready-to-hang art from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
“We need the whimsical, so please bring in your wonderful tomato with the face on it, or whatever else you have,” they said. “We need that levity.”
Organizers will help hang the pieces. A reception is planned for Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m. The art will hang in the mall through August.
Hitched & Happy Event Center in the Asheville Mall is the space's very first wedding venue. (768x627, AR: 1.2248803827751196)
Wrestling, weddings, and everything in between
The Mall Rats aren’t the only group bringing fresh energy into the space. Next to the future art exhibit, electronic music pulses from Mountain Peak Athletic Center, a training center for wrestlers and boxers.
In the food court, there’s Island Pan, a locally-owned Jamaican restaurant that serves generous, heaping plates of curried goat, jerk chicken and oxtail. Another local spot, La Feria, offers fair hits like funnel cake, churros and chamoyada, a Mexican fruit cup drizzled with chamoy and Tajin.
And down by the Dillards, a new wedding venue, Happy & Hitched, is opening up inside a former storefront, right across from an indoor trampoline park. The venue has rows of white chairs set up inside and sheer fabric billowing from the ceiling. Ornate chandeliers wash the room in a pleasant hue.
Autumn Davis plans to get married there this weekend.
“They have taken a store and turned it into a beautiful event space,” she said. “It is gorgeous.”
Davis, an avid shopper, will be one of the first to get married in the mall.
“I mean, what more can a girl dream of? You can do everything while you're at your wedding,” she said. “You can get your makeup done, your hair done, you can go across and eat at the Chinese place.”
Davis joked that she and her future husband want to go on the mall's trampoline ride after the ceremony.
“I think I'm going to try to do a backflip,” she said.
JC Penney is slated to close at the end of May. (1024x768, AR: 1.3333333333333333)
All part of the mall’s evolution
The wedding venue, the art exhibit, and the wrestling ring are all part of the shopping center’s evolution, Michelle Allen, the mall’s leasing manager, said.
While it’s sad to see some malls close, she believes Asheville Mall will “push through” and remain relevant due to all of its local flavor.
“That's what we try to do is go out into the community and the surrounding areas and find something that is going to add to the uniqueness,” she said.
That means more mall rat activities, more dance events, and maybe even some farmers markets, she said. So far, Allen’s approach is working.
“Last year, we had 3.26 million visitors to Asheville Mall,” she said. “So, take that, people who say the mall's dying!”
“We talk about malls all the time and how we all have different experiences with them, but there is a shared kind of language and a shared nostalgia,” Mace said. “It’s a place where you feel like you can discover something either about yourself or about the community.”
Nationwide, the number of malls is almost certainly "on the decline." The number of malls in the United States dropped from 2,500 to approximately 700 over the last 40 years, according to Atlas Obscura. Some closed malls sit abandoned, while others have been demolished entirely to make room for a new kind of development.
At the Asheville Mall, there have been some setbacks – like the loss of Sears in 2018 and the imminent closure of JC Penney. But Mace and his fellow Mall Rats say they see an opportunity to help reinvent the space.
“It's just a perfect time to reflect a little bit on what the history of the mall was … now's the perfect time to reimagine that,” he said.
It’s not just Asheville playing with the concept of malls. In Sumter, S.C., a charter school has moved into an old Macy's. In Santa Ana, Calif., developers are turning sections of the mall into housing. In Quincy, Ill., an old mall is home to a cancer and surgery center.
And here in Asheville, the Mall Rats are thinking about the mall as a creative space. They’ve hosted dance events and fashion shows at the mall. And now this weekend, the group plans to turn a blank hallway into an art exhibit.
“We're looking at the mall as a canvas and what can we put in it,” Mace said.
The parking, plentiful air conditioning and ADA-compliant infrastructure are also important, Mace continued. It means people from all walks of life can be included.
Liz Williams, another Mall Rat member, is asking anyone – and they mean anyone – who wants to share their art, to bring it to the corridor next to JC Penney on May 24 as part of the group’s “You Are Here” exhibit. The event invites people to bring their ready-to-hang art from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
“We need the whimsical, so please bring in your wonderful tomato with the face on it, or whatever else you have,” they said. “We need that levity.”
Organizers will help hang the pieces. A reception is planned for Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m. The art will hang in the mall through August.
Hitched & Happy Event Center in the Asheville Mall is the space's very first wedding venue. (768x627, AR: 1.2248803827751196)
Wrestling, weddings, and everything in between
The Mall Rats aren’t the only group bringing fresh energy into the space. Next to the future art exhibit, electronic music pulses from Mountain Peak Athletic Center, a training center for wrestlers and boxers.
In the food court, there’s Island Pan, a locally-owned Jamaican restaurant that serves generous, heaping plates of curried goat, jerk chicken and oxtail. Another local spot, La Feria, offers fair hits like funnel cake, churros and chamoyada, a Mexican fruit cup drizzled with chamoy and Tajin.
And down by the Dillards, a new wedding venue, Happy & Hitched, is opening up inside a former storefront, right across from an indoor trampoline park. The venue has rows of white chairs set up inside and sheer fabric billowing from the ceiling. Ornate chandeliers wash the room in a pleasant hue.
Autumn Davis plans to get married there this weekend.
“They have taken a store and turned it into a beautiful event space,” she said. “It is gorgeous.”
Davis, an avid shopper, will be one of the first to get married in the mall.
“I mean, what more can a girl dream of? You can do everything while you're at your wedding,” she said. “You can get your makeup done, your hair done, you can go across and eat at the Chinese place.”
Davis joked that she and her future husband want to go on the mall's trampoline ride after the ceremony.
“I think I'm going to try to do a backflip,” she said.
JC Penney is slated to close at the end of May. (1024x768, AR: 1.3333333333333333)
All part of the mall’s evolution
The wedding venue, the art exhibit, and the wrestling ring are all part of the shopping center’s evolution, Michelle Allen, the mall’s leasing manager, said.
While it’s sad to see some malls close, she believes Asheville Mall will “push through” and remain relevant due to all of its local flavor.
“That's what we try to do is go out into the community and the surrounding areas and find something that is going to add to the uniqueness,” she said.
That means more mall rat activities, more dance events, and maybe even some farmers markets, she said. So far, Allen’s approach is working.
“Last year, we had 3.26 million visitors to Asheville Mall,” she said. “So, take that, people who say the mall's dying!”