A Final Walk Through Plano’s Collin Creek Mall With a Mom, Her Daughter and the Ghosts of Our Younger Selves

Wrecking-ball-bound Collin Creek Mall will rumble one last time Friday night with a 1980s vibe as a nostalgic public — some traveling from out of state and others vowing to arrive on roller skates — gets a chance to say goodbye to the retail relic.To avoid the crowds and make my last visit earlier in the week, I instead unexpectedly ran into a totally different kind of mob scene: blood-covered, ripped-clothing-clad zombies chasing down terrified victims through the Plano shopping center’s barrel-vaulted emptiness.Antonia DeNardo, who owns Lewisville-based DTV Studios, had brought her summer movie camp to the lifeless mall this week to film its final production. She lived in Plano as a child and was excited to share some of Collin Creek’s history with her young actors.“Now we’ll have film footage of the abandoned mall that will stay in our hearts just like the memories,” DeNardo told me as she and her actors headed to the exit. The gleaming-yet-dead space then returned to a spooky quiet — except for the disembodied voices from advertising kiosks playing to the empty bright-white hallways.The scene was akin to watching Stranger Things overrun The Breakfast Club — an allegory of the rise and fall of Collin Creek Mall and the many other shopping centers dying similar deaths.  Continue reading...