A Giant Fairytale Mall in Colorado Is Being Brought Back to Virtual Life
Cinderella City is a really good name for a mall. The storybook name, in fact, started out as the “glamorous code name” Denver shopping center king Gerri Von Frellick used for his new project. It was to be the world’s largest shopping center, according to this article from the Denver Public Library, and local politicians didn’t like the name, even offering Von Frellick concessions to change it.
“Von Frellick claimed that it was just a placeholder,” Brian K. Trembath writes. “For reasons that appear to be unexplained, he kept the name anyway.” Cinderella City opened on March 7, 1968, and closed thirty years later on August 18, 1998. It was, at one time, the largest shopping center west of the Mississippi, and it was a true —and unusually designed — fairytale mall.
There was a 40-foot fountain that shot up between four Space Age-inspired white pillars. There was a double-decker carousel. There was a place called Funtastic Nathan’s, a bizarre fantasyland of saucer-sized lollipops, sky-high teddy bears, and, once upon a time, clown revenge. Cinderella City was a somewhat confusing maze of 1.35 million square feet of retail space, split into five individual malls: Blue Mall for the central atrium, Rose Mall and Gold Mall for the upper-level wings, and Shamrock Mall and Cinder-Alley for the basement wings.
Josh Goldstein, who grew up in the Denver area going to Cinderella City with his mom, is digitally rebuilding the gigantic mall he grew up fascinated by. Described as a “fully-detailed digital recreation of Cinderella City Mall for a virtual reality experience,” the rebuild is happening during the 50th anniversary year of the mall’s opening date.
Goldstein, who has a Master of Architecture degree from Kansas State University, currently works on a 3D architectural design app called FormIt, which allows architectural designers to draw and iterate building designs in a 3D editor environment.
“[Rebuilding the mall] is a dream job for me since I have the ability to test and improve the software I’m intimately familiar with and use every day. I like to design fictional adaptive reuse solutions for real buildings that are endangered or already gone, like Cinderella City, but generally on a lower scale,” he writes.
He was kind enough to talk with Very Famous about his project, why Cinderella City was a special place, and how dead mall obsessives (and nostalgic Denver-area residents) will soon be able to live a virtual dream. He also provided us with a trove of Cin City photos during the shopping center’s various incarnations, with accompanying captions. You can keep up with the progress of the mall’s reconstruction on Instagram here. Now, let’s go to the mall!
I’d love to know about your connection to Cinderella City. What drew you to digitally recreating this mall?
Cinderella City was at the end of its life when I became aware of it as a kid in the mid-1990s. I have a few scattered memories of walking down its lonely basement corridors or driving through the dark underground parking with my mom. She would go to Montgomery Ward, which was the last remaining anchor in the mall before it closed for good, or to the bank which was inside the former JC Penney Auto Center.
I remember the corridor leading to Montgomery Ward was dim, and the stores on either side were all shuttered. It seemed endless as we went from one end to the other. Finally, when we got to Ward’s, I noticed there was a half-height wall preventing customers from entering the rest of the mall’s basement areas, including the Food Court. I really wanted to sneak around that wall and explore the truly abandoned areas. Even at that time, I was vaguely aware there was a deeper story underneath all the sadness and emptiness and would ask my mom to recite her memory of the grandeur of the mall in its heyday. I swear I could feel the energy of past decades in those quiet spaces, and from then on I wanted to know more about its history.
I became more aware when demolition started in 1998. I recall seeing it mid-demolition as we passed by one day, and I was entranced by the sheer magnitude of the place. From the street, I could see into the vast dark volumes and make out the dense concrete structural elements inside and wondered what the interior looked like when the mall was open and busy. It was hard to imagine given the brutal nature of the demolition site. It struck me as such an incredible dichotomy: that the place my family would recall in happy, colorful memories was now fenced off and exposing its dark interior and bare concrete structure to the elements.
My dad had just purchased our first home computer, and I used it to look up the history of Cinderella City. At that time, the City of Englewood was impressively keeping their website up-to-date with demolition photos and some historic photos of the mall. I was fascinated. How did a place that looked so fabulous in 1968 wind up looking like a war zone in 1998? Over the next 20 years, my interest would occasionally resurface and I would attempt to gather as much new data on it as I could. The place held architectural and cultural mysteries that I wanted to uncover. With this project, I’ve been able to do that.
I discovered through my research that Cinderella City was ahead of its time in some respects. As the name would indicate, the developer envisioned Cinderella City to be more than just a shopping mall: it was a small city akin to mixed-used developments in vogue today, albeit fully enclosed. Its city block-wide central atrium would host many concerts, conventions, boat and car shows, and various community events to great fanfare. It had a suite of offices on the 3rd level where community institutions could have a brick-and-mortar presence, and it even hosted an Englewood High School “city campus” for a few years, where hundreds of local high school students would take courses in the mezzanine level of the mall.
In the basement, one of the wings known as Cinder Alley was a bazaar of local proprietors selling their wares in tiny “Olde English”-style stores accessible by narrow “alleys” that split off from the main corridor, a concept reminiscent of today’s market or food halls. Complete with blacked out ceiling tiles and street lamps and sidewalks, Cinder Alley was one of the most distinct parts of Cinderella City’s atmosphere, until it lost its character with the big mall remodel of the 1980s. Additionally, in all the main corridors, the design included mini-courts where smaller events could take place, such as boxing rings, Halloween costume competitions, and art and cultural exhibits. I discovered Cinderella City was truly much more than a mall: it was also a community hub and events center.
Cinderella City changed significantly in an early 1980s renovation, which was intended to address the fading 1960s decor, overall darkness of the spaces, and a perceived need to refresh the tenant mix. The colorful corridors were painted white (although they kept their color-based names), skylights were added, and holes in the floor were cut to get light into the basement areas.
In addition, the iconic fountain in the center court was unceremoniously removed, making room for huge openings in the floor that revealed a new basement food court, built inside a section of the below-grade parking. Many local tenants were replaced with larger national retailers.
Cinder Alley, in particular, saw the removal of its small alleys and storefronts in favor of large spaces that management thought would lease better (they didn’t). The mall lost much of what gave it a unique character: it felt less like a fairy tale, and more like a generic 1980s regional mall. The three-year renovation effort ultimately failed to save it from decline. Cinderella City closed in 1997.
Where are you at in the process of recreating the mall, and what have been some of the unexpected surprises or challenges?
The project is divided into two main chunks of work: the first is actually drawing the mall in a 3D modeling environment, and the second is importing the 3D data into a video game engine and enhancing it with realistic lighting, sounds, people, vegetation, and interactive elements. I’m currently focused on 3D modeling the mall in the 1980s/1990s era, while simultaneously getting the model into the game engine and playing around with the lights, sounds, and interactions that will underpin the experience of the simulation. Soon I’ll be replacing the 2D cutout people with 3D animated ones and adding realistic trees inside. With each step, the experience will become more immersive.
Getting enough data to accurately model the 1.35-million square foot shopping center over three decades has been a challenge. The Englewood Public Library has worked with me to uncover thousands of photos, plans, and other documents from their historic archives, but there are still large areas that I have no photographic evidence of, particularly in the 1960s/1970s era. A couple of articles in a local newspaper, Westword, have helped raise awareness of the project and encouraged community members to send me photos, and I’ve solicited additional photographs from the community through various Facebook groups. It’s a long shot since people weren’t carrying cameras in their pockets back then, but the occasional birthday or a budding photographer could uncover photos that show details I can incorporate into the model to improve its accuracy.
Why do you think people love malls so much? Or, more specifically, seem to be enthralled with this sort of retro, warm environment? I feel like there’s something about the design of these places — lots of warm woods and curves and neon – that speak to people in a way current design doesn’t always.
I think there’s a certain nostalgia for shopping malls that’s embedded in our collective conscience. Indoor malls had a moment that helped define retail architecture, and while that moment has passed, the designs of yesteryear can still invoke warm memories of hanging out at your favorite shopping mall in a bygone era. From talking to various people who have expressed their interest in the Cinderella City Project, I know that Cin City touched many lives in ways that were more profound than I expected. People met their future spouses and best friends here, had life-changing discussions here, or had their last memory of a loved one here. One couple even got married at Cinderella City. Shopping malls were once a place where much of one’s social life happened. I think it can be felt for generations and makes even those of us too young to be an OG mallrat nostalgic for a simpler time.
What’s next for the Cinderella City project and — when it’s available — how people will be able to experience it?
I have a lot of work to do but am hoping to get a very early build of the game out soon to a few of the biggest fans of the project so they can test it and, in some cases, experience the mall again for the first time in 20+ years. I think there’s an interesting story to be told here about how Cinderella City (and retail in general) changed through the decades. Each era will have distinct ambient sounds and musical tracks, so switching between them will be both a visual and an auditory experience that I’m excited to build and try. A couple of musical artists have reached out to provide soundtracks for the Cinderella City Project. Instagram’s @bdaltonne is providing awesome ambient sounds and muzak emanating from mall speakers, and @dead__mall has ’80s synth music blaring from a few stores.
In addition to recreating the old mall, I also intend to use my background in architectural design to create an alternate reality version of the mall, where instead of demolishing it, I would develop a realistic concept to keep large chunks of the mall as a historic exhibit, but update and convert other areas into modern retail amenities with open-air plazas to demonstrate a more creative solution to its demise in the late 1990s. This would also be part of the simulation, allowing users to switch to this version of the mall to show what could have been. It will be an interactive architectural thesis on top of a virtual history exhibit.
When enough of the work is complete, I’ll be partnering with the Englewood Public Library to host a limited event where members of the community can experience the mall (in all eras) through a virtual reality headset on site. The library is housed within the former Broadway Southwest department store at Cinderella City (the only building saved from demolition), which is also featured in the 3D model. Within the simulation, I’ll build out a feature to allow people to leave digital “memories” in the form of voice snippets, and represent them visually and digitally within the 3D space. The virtual version of the mall will serve as a repository of real memories.
Ultimately, I’ll make the simulation available to anyone around the world, by letting them download and install it on their computer and walk around using the keyboard and mouse, no VR headset required. The detailed model easily lends itself to being a level or map in a more traditional video game. For instance, an escape adventure, clue-finding quest, or a role-playing mystery game set inside this huge, archaic indoor city could be interesting and give the project a wider audience and a purpose beyond the historical and experimental.
Follow @cinderellacityproject on Instagram! Photos and captions provided by Josh Goldstein.
5 Comments
Loved that mall. It was the heart and center of the City of Englewood for many years. It was home away from home for me every summer, most weekends and even some school nights. Everybody either worked there or hung out there. Born in ’71, I grew up with CC, or Cin City, and while I remember both the pre and post remodel eras I spent most of my time there and have the most memories from about 1985-1994. I never was a fan of the remodel and even though I was quite young I knew it wouldn’t help and in fact maybe make things worse. The CC lost it’s charm and uniqueness. At that point it became a wanna be, or “poser” (to cite some of the slang of the time) version of the shinny new Southwest Plazza or the soon to be built Cherry Creek Mall. Unfortunately, the city of Englewood has a history of tearing down their history and sadly, nearly all of the places where all my childhood memories were made are gone or soon will be. The city has no roots.
I worked there near the end. And I lived 6 blocked away. For some inside information you need to talk to Ed Pez,he was building engineer the entire time it was open !
My senior prom for Douglas County High School was held at the fountain in 1970. It was all so romantic. 🙂 I lived about 5 miles from Elizabeth, Colorado on a small ranch, but I grew up in Englewood. One of my first jobs after high school was at the Robinhood restaurant in Cin City. Ok that didn’t last long – the trays were as big across as I was tall, but I do have fond memories of the fountain and how exciting it all was. Thanks for doing this project!
This. Is. Brilliant!
Cinderella City was decades ahead of its time; mixed use before the term became popular. It offered more than economic benefit to the area; it was truly a social microcosm. People’s lives unfolded there. Places like Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlor hosted milestones. Fredricks of Hollywood was the place to shop for bridal or special occasion lingerie and naughty bits, long before the internet made finding such things easy. Cinder Alley was an adventure. The fountain that was the centerpiece was truly awesome in size and beauty. You don’t see anything like it today.
Thank you for your work with this project.
I worked at Round the Corner restaurant in the early 80’s as a employee, than a shift manager, and than the store manager.