The Palisades Center mall under construction in 1996. Credit: Roger Grange
What happens when the largest mall developer in the Northeast comes to the smallest county in New York to build its biggest mall—on a toxic dump—one mile from three filmmakers’ homes?
MegaMall, which was screened at the Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital last week, is a documentary about how money, power and politics are changing America’s landscape. Filmmakers Sarah Mondale, Vera Aronow and Roger Grange spent 14 years creating the film, which documents the origins of Palisades Center in suburban West Nyack, NY, one of the biggest malls in America. They also continued reporting long after the mall opened in 1998, finding—among other things—that the developer’s claims of jobs and tax benefits, and their promise of a luxury mall, were overblown.
I recently talked to Mondale and Aronow about making the film and how they went from being objective about the battle to finding enough proof to take a side.
You started filming in 1996. What was it that made you realize the battle over a mall would make a good subject for a documentary?
VA: At the time, the three of us lived a mile from the proposed site of the mall. It’s in the Hudson Valley, 20 minutes north of New York City. People were talking very emotionally about the issues. We went to a meeting in 1996, and 1,000 people were there with signs—citizens against, unions for. It was a heated exchange.
When you first started going to these meetings, what were the sides saying?
SM: The opponents were talking about crime, traffic, pollution the end of life as we know it. Then we had the developers, Pyramid Companies, on the other side, and they were also charming and convincing and reasonable. It was confusing at first. At the beginning we thought we’d show both sides and let viewers make up their minds.
So did you end up taking a side?
SM: We didn’t want to be an advocacy film, and we didn’t want to have a knee-jerk response. We thought the opponents were being over-emotional, but eventually—through research and reporting and FOIA requests–we decided they were almost exactly right. Most of their predictions came true.
So when you followed the claims the developer made, versus what actually happened, what did you find?
SM: We could say a few things with certainty:
- When the mall and its 20-screen multiplex opened, six out of eight single-screen theaters closed in two years in Rockland County, many of them on Main Street.
- The downtown of Rockland has been hit hard. The people who used to shop downtown are now shopping at the mall.
- Rockland’s older mall was built up the road in the ‘70s, and that’s a total ghost town now. The lights aren’t even all on. The developers predicted that would bounce back and said that the area was “under-retailed” and needed more stores. That certainly didn’t happen.
- The mall had very specific promises on tax relief and jobs. They said taxes would go down, and that hasn’t happened.
- It has channeled money to the state but not to the town or the next town.
- The mall is like a city. With 75,000 people or more on a busy weekend, it’s costly to run it and police it.
- There is a new type of crime that has come to the mall, like car theft rings.
What about pollution?
SM: That was hard to document. We’ll look at it over time. It was a Superfund site; there were two landfills there. They capped the landfills and built on that.
Did you think there was a chance that the mall wouldn’t get built, or did it feel like a done deal?
SM: It wasn’t a done deal in the beginning, back in the ‘80s. The town board voted against it, then the zoning board approved it. So we knew there would be a mall, the question was whether it would be the second biggest mall in America.
If people knew then what they know now—from your reporting—would the outcome have been different?
VA: It would have been hard to stop. People like to shop—it’s the national pastime. I think people could have made their arguments more powerfully right at the beginning, if we knew then what we know now. The consensus is that it’s not a well-built, beautiful mall [as the developers promised]. But nonetheless, it’s crowded, with people from other counties. Some people from this county refuse to go there.
Since similar clashes between developers and communities happen time and time again, all over the country, what can citizens take from this?
VA: Don’t leave it to the officials—they could be involved part-time in real estate or the construction union. Get involved, go to the meetings, get your voices heard. Citizens who do their research are often right.
