The South Hills Mall

MALL
THE SOUTH HILLS
"Other malls may have stores; but I have character."
You're probably sitting there thinking... "Are You Kidding Me??" I'm most certainly not; watch how much I'm kidding...
South Hills Mall was the first true indoor shopping mall in Poughkeepsie (though Poughkeepsie Plaza Mall, a strip mall which was later enclosed, predated it) and the second in Dutchess County after Dutchess Mall in Fishkill. At the outset, anchors were Sears, KMart, and Service Merchandise and an assortment of smaller stores common for the era. South Hills quickly became the dominant retail center in the Poughkeepsie area, leading to a realignment at Poughkeepsie Plaza and the closing of venerable downtown retailer Luckey Platt & Co. in 1981. A later expansion added Hess's and a food court.
In the early 1980s, an initial proposal for a two-story mall adjacent to South Hills was submitted; after several years of protests, this proposal became Poughkeepsie Galleria and opened in 1987. Though the malls co-existed successfully for the first several years of the Galleria's existence, as the 1990s began South Hills began to suffer. The decline largely began in 1991 when Hess's closed their location and Sears moved to the Galleria; the Hess's space was replaced by Burlington Coat Factory while the Sears space was divided between Pharmhouse and a (freestanding) Price Chopper supermarket.
Around this time, South Hills was sold to Sarakreek, a Dutch property holding firm which reimaged the mall into a "power center" in which "big-box" retailers would open locations inside the mall. Smaller stores were replaced by such stores as Media Play, Old Navy, Office Max, Discovery Zone, and Bob's Stores. This strategy lessened the decline for a short period, however in the long run the alienation of smaller stores only led to a further, greater decline to the point that all of the aforementioned stores either have closed or will close in the near future.
Oddly enough, still we have all either worked there or know someone who has... and just like clockwork, we find ourselves roaming it's halls more than we'd like to admit.
With the addition of this profile, it's official:
EVERYONE has a myspace.