City View Center – A shopping center built on toxic land (2020) | Hacker News Reader

City View Center – A shopping center built on toxic land (2020)

architecturalafterlife.com

90 pointsfortran7732 comments

Much of this story seems to be inaccurate, or perhaps outright fabricated for clickbait. The Wikipedia article for City View Center tells a much more boring story:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_View_Center

Wal-Mart did move out because of structural problems and a methane leak, but most of the other stores moved out as a consequence of Wal-Mart leaving. Two stores remain open, and there are still plans to re-use the rest of the site.

Also, despite the story talking about the buildings "sinking", the photographs included in the article clearly show the opposite is happening, the buildings are rising/floating up out of the ground, and are now higher than they were originally.

I googled, and apparently the plans to redevelop it as a business park have been complete and the first tenants have moved in: https://www.bizjournals.com/cleveland/news/2021/10/21/highla...

I dunno, it's certainly possible that some of the claims are true, but I couldn't find anyone else making them or talking about them. Which is odd, because some of what's being claimed is quite serious.

I'm sceptical.

Does the story talk about the building sinking? Or the ground.

The story talks about the ground sinking. The editorialised HN title talks about the building sinking, which may just be made up.

Circuit City being listed among the retailers that left in 2008 raised red flags for me. Hmmm, what happened in 2008, and with Circuit City?

I'm not sure about the parking lot sinking vs. the buildings floating. On one hand, it does seem like a heavy building wouldn't stay put while the plain asphalt sunk down under virtually no weight. But maybe the foundations were properly compacted while the rest of the parking lot wasn't? Or some other steps were taken to prepare the (known) landfill for a heavy building, but nothing was done for just a plain tarmac? Because the heaviest structures floating upward while the rest of the parking lot stays put doesn't seem intuitive to me either.

> Hmmm, what happened in 2008, and with Circuit City?

I looked it up: "On November 10, 2008, Circuit City filed for bankruptcy protection", says Wikipedia.

Circuit City was a consumer electronics chain with stores across the US.

Ha, thanks. That's exactly what I was alluding to. This particular sinking strip mall wasn't the reason Circuit City left. The whole damn thing went under :)

> Or some other steps were taken to prepare the (known) landfill for a heavy building, but nothing was done for just a plain tarmac?

Yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underpinning

Unrelated but I found this paragraph in the article quite... weird. Natural juices and vitamins?

>One woman, Sandy Funk, had begun having blackouts at the age of 37, having developed a brain tumor. She got herself onto a diet of natural juices and vitamins, and was able to live for another 18 years, but only after they had removed two thirds of her tumor via a surgery.

Same for me. Though I’m 50/50 on this being a deadpan joke, especially after the last part.

It does seem odd that a CMBS lender would finance a ~$80MM loan on a site this risky if it was this bad.

I’ve worked in a special servicing (loan servicing for troubled and REO assets) shop and overheard the headaches that an environmental survey caused an old gas station or dry-cleaner; that this continues to get resurrected is curious.

Toxic waste is apparently boring?

"She said the proximity of a Wal-Mart store within City View Center was not a factor" said Jo-Ann spokeswoman Lisa Greb

The one store was mentioned in the article and the second an Applebee's is a separate standalone building.

"ground sinking at city view center" "Underneath the buildings are layers of clay, concrete, gravel and a vinyl-like material" They fortified the ground under the buildings and it still had structural issues and the ground around it kept sinking

> despite the story talking about the buildings "sinking", the photographs included in the article clearly show the opposite is happening, the buildings are rising/floating up out of the ground, and are now higher than they were originally.

A video posted below by fortran77 shows more clearly what's going on. The parking lot is sinking around the mall. Here's a timestamp to the relevant part: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmX1YWhYMzI&t=19m45s

The mall actually seems to be a superfund site [1]. Hard to believe retailers got out for predominantly commercial reasons.

[1] https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/cursites/csitinfo.cfm?id=0...

It is a NFRAP site which means the EPA feels no further remediation is needed and encourages the site to be returned to productive use. The EPA has a whole superfund redevelopment program.

This story underscores how toothless our environmental regulations are. Rather than protect people from these kinds of developments (which shouldn’t even be allowed to happen), all they do is provide a never ending cycle of lawsuits for NIMBY groups posing as environmentally conscious entities to slow down development in wealthy areas so they can wait until there’s an agreeable payoff. Meanwhile, the poorer areas get developed without so much as a sniff from the government agencies as long as someone somewhere checked the correct boxes saying an environmental study was done (regardless of the study’s conclusions).

We need real environmental law reforms. The EPA should be abolished and rebuilt with an actual mission to protect the environment instead of their current regulatory regime which has been completely captured by industry and “environmental” groups.

I went to a high school in the UK that had been built on an ex landfill site. I was only there for just over a year, but the methane alarm went off a few times then, resulting in evacuations.

The school was relatively new, having allegedly been built around 2003 because Asda (then owned by Walmart) wanted to move a supermarket from one side of the road to the other.

According to folklore the developers paid for the design from US architects who specialise in prison architecture – which was believable because it looked and felt much like a small prison.

According to folklore basically every school building or block of flats ever constructed was designed based on a prison!

Hey now, I went to a high school where none of the walls went all the way to the ceiling, or even to the corners! There was only one central hallway, so in addition to not having doors anywhere, you might have to walk through one or two other classroom to get where you needed to go.

Surprisingly, it worked.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but wouldn't the sound carry through to other classrooms?

No no, you are right. However, it was more like white noise than anything else, with the occasional word or sentence that could be recognized from someone talking too loudly.

But you know, with a little thought and effort, open spaces don't have to be loud. This was covered on HN years ago: https://m.signalvnoise.com/library-rules-how-to-make-an-open...

Oh that was 50 years ago, it was a different time.

I wonder how many disgusting things we'll be looking back at in 2070.

It was 20 years ago that construction on top of a toxic dump was first considered, in 2001. Neither that or the original dumping of toxic waste 50 years ago should have ever been allowed.

If this story is anything to go by, you won’t need to look back. 2021 will be seeping up through your floorboards.

Here in the Netherlands along with the cradle-to-cradle hype a paper reality has been created where all kinds of hazardous waste can be turned into 'building material' and then used (read: dumped) anywhere freely, and making double profits. There was a TV series last year, "De Vuilnisman" (the garbage man) that addressed various ways this happens.

The most important theme of this story is the unbridled corruption that started with the landfill decades before it became a mall. The impact from this site affects the local community that government officials in Ohio could not care enough to represent (read as poor and minority). Then the corruption that allowed the mall project to go ahead. After all that has happened it is still not condemned and designated as a superfund site. Now developers still want to repurpose the site and the government officials in Ohio are not blocking this. Ohio, have you no pride?

Ignore the pedantic trolling over what was sinking: the land or the buildings. It is meaningless.

This story stinks, first red flag that the author might not be sane:

> Sandy Funk, had begun having blackouts at the age of 37, having developed a brain tumor. She got herself onto a diet of natural juices and vitamins, and was able to live for another 18 years, [...]

Ok the [...] is this: > but only after they had removed two thirds of her tumor via a surgery.

so it might be bad writing, but it could be read like the unnamed author could be trying to claim juices and vitamins help against brain tumors.

After that, I took the anti-government and anti-EPA missives with a grain of salt, if I cared more I would've done the research to see if they're writing the truth or are just spreading another "government is bad" conspiracy theory.

Seems like it's actually been redeveloped now https://www.bizjournals.com/cleveland/news/2021/10/21/highla...

So any lawsuits?

Also see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmX1YWhYMzI

Just noticed the video was posted four hours before your comment - is this yours? It really shows the dilapidation.

Crazy to think it was only built (not abandoned) 15 years ago.

One of my favourite YouTube channels also covered this mall (3 years ago).

https://youtu.be/Mr1CWRc174o

Bright Sun Films covers heaps of crazy abandoned projects like this. His channel is amazing.

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