Dixie Square Mall, the Blues Brothers Mall

Dixie Square Mall was a shopping mall in Harvey, Illinois that closed in 1979, became the setting for the car chase in The Blues Brothers, and then sat abandoned for more than three decades until the state paid to tear it down in 2012. It is the most famous dead mall in the Chicago area, and the reason it is famous is a movie that was shot in it a few months after the last customers left.

I haven’t been inside it, so this is a history post built from news reports and public records, and every fact below links to where it came from. It’s entertainment and general information, not legal or safety advice. A building like this was fenced, condemned and owned by someone, and none of this is a reason to go near a place like it.

What was Dixie Square Mall?

It was a mid sized shopping mall in Harvey, a south suburb of Chicago. ABC7 reported that it opened in 1965, and NBC News gave 1966, so the safe version is the mid 1960s. The same NBC report put the site at 39 acres, and ABC7 described the complex as roughly 600,000 square feet.

The anchor and notable stores aren’t well documented in the sources I could open. The Columbia Chronicle, the student paper of Columbia College Chicago, named Toys R Us and Pier 1 Imports and said faded signs still hung where they once operated. It also said shopper traffic fell steadily as the area’s crime rate rose. That’s the standard slow death of a mall, and it matches what I wrote in what is a dead mall.

NPR and the Center for Land Use Interpretation both say the mall shut down in 1979. The CLUI describes Harvey as a depressed south suburb that was once known as “the gateway to the south suburbs.”

How did it end up in The Blues Brothers?

It was empty, it was big, and nobody minded what happened to it. The film came out in 1980, and NPR says the chase scene has the heroes escaping police in their “blues mobile” by driving through the mall and wrecking the stores. The CLUI says police cars were driven through the stores and walkways less than a year after the mall closed.

The Columbia Chronicle adds the detail that the mall was briefly reopened and modified in 1979 for the shoot. John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd’s 1974 Dodge Monaco, the Bluesmobile, went through the interior and shattered glass, and the chase destroys a Toys R Us store. The paper also said the filming sped up the building’s deterioration. The most famous thing that ever happened at Dixie Square happened after it was already dead.

NPR’s own line about it is that the chase was the most action the mall had seen in a long time.

Why did a mall sit empty for more than 30 years?

Because nobody could agree on who would pay, and the building kept getting worse. The CLUI says several attempts to convert the mall or demolish it were made, including a federal program supported by then U.S. Representative Jesse Jackson Jr., and none cleared the political or financial hurdles. ABC7 said the property had several owners and failed redevelopment plans, and that neglect, weather and scavengers took their toll.

Harvey did put parts of the site to use. The CLUI says the Harvey Police Department used the west parking lot as a heliport, and that newer buildings on the property housed the department’s headquarters, including temporary jail facilities. A mall that sat empty for decades also had a working police station on its lot.

Then there was the asbestos. NBC News reported that Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan sued Harvey in 2005 over asbestos removal, and that the suit halted cleanup work. The Columbia Chronicle reported it a little differently, saying the attorney general’s office sued the site’s developer after asbestos was allegedly removed illegally. The sources don’t line up on who was sued, so all I can say is that a lawsuit over asbestos stalled the cleanup. Why that word matters is covered in asbestos in abandoned buildings. The respirator on my gear list is the 3M 6200 half face respirator, and a better answer than any filter is staying out.

Why was Dixie Square Mall torn down?

It was condemned. NBC Chicago reported that Harvey condemned the building over concerns about structural stability and asbestos, and ABC7 said it was recently condemned over health and safety concerns after about 40 years of vacancy. I covered what that word means in what does condemned mean on a building. It is a legal finding that a building is unsafe, and it is the usual step before a demolition order.

The money came from an odd place. ABC7 said the $4 million project was funded by a federal disaster grant meant for communities hit by flood damage from the remnants of Hurricane Ike. NBC News said Governor Pat Quinn set aside $4 million in federal disaster recovery funds in 2010. Quinn’s line when demolition was announced was that it was “time for this now vacant building to be torn down.”

ABC7 reported on January 25, 2012 that demolition would start with asbestos removal and take about six months. NBC Chicago reported on February 15, 2012 that demolition had begun, with cleanup expected to finish by late summer 2012. The state expected the project to support 42 jobs, 18 of them new full time positions.

What was left when it came down?

By then it was a ruin. The Columbia Chronicle described chipped graffiti, rusted pipes, concrete cracked by weeds and shards of glass, and said the mall had been abandoned for more than 30 years. The CLUI said it was finally demolished in 2012 after decades of harsh weather, vandalism and new forest growth on the site. I’ve filmed trees growing right up against the walls of an abandoned building near Chicago, and that is the same process.

What happened to the site?

NBC Chicago said the cleared land could later host retail, light industrial or housing projects, and Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity Director Warren Ribley said Harvey and the state could now move forward with development plans. ABC7 noted that the private developer that owned the site had no signed contracts or letters of intent from retailers, and that it was unclear what would be built. The reports I opened end there, so I won’t say what stands on the site today. Check Harvey’s own announcements before you trust anyone’s summary, including mine.

What does an abandoned mall look like when it’s real?

Not like the movie. Dixie Square was a set for one chase and a mess for the other 30 years. I explored an abandoned shopping center in Arlington Heights, Illinois, and the walk went through an acupuncture clinic, a dentist’s office, an antique shop and a gym. I also have a video at Chesterfield Mall in Missouri. Neither one is Dixie Square, and neither one has a movie car chase in its history.

If you want to know how I look into a building’s history before I decide whether a place is worth documenting, that process is in how to research an abandoned building, and the longer version is in my $9.99 PDF, How to Find Abandoned Places.

Dixie Square Mall is gone, and the chase is still on film.