Southdale Center — Attraction in Edina

For being the very first indoor mall...in the entire country...Southdale sure leaves a lot to be desired. I am at this mall very frequently and have watched it slowly, but surely, continue to decline. There are many vacant storefronts, even some totally vacant hallways...with all former shops shuttered up. The stores they do have just play location-rotation and move from one spot in the mall to another, in hopes of drawing more business, I suppose? I am very eager for the Kowalski's Market to finally open. That will be a much-needed addition. Another plus here is the combined DMV and Hennepin County Services Center. It's very convenient for folks, like me, who are here often. The food court [this term is a stretch for this location] is extremely meager. There are just a small handful of restaurants and some seem to pick and choose when to be open, despite posted operating hours stating otherwise. The entire north end of the mall was converted into a massive Lifetime Fitness. This is okay. If you have the open space, use that before building new. I think what irks me the most though is, the constantly malfunctioning elevators and escalators. When I tell you that you will NEVER enter this mall and find all transportation options in working order at the same time...believe me! The photo of the out of service escalator I included is from today and has been out of service for...at least...four months. [This is a typical time frame for both the elevators and escalators when they go down.] The 'caution' banner has been up since at least this past Monday, it is Friday today and no work has been done on it in between. Other than this escalator, another one on the main south entrance side of the mall is once again down and has been down for close to a month this time. They put the little caution barrier over it to prevent people from walking down it. We still do though because, the next closest place to get down is in Macy's or much further down the mall corridor. This escalator area does not have stairs as another option either. When the passenger elevators actually do work, the freight elevators are down. When the freight elevators are working, the passenger elevators are down. It's a never-ending cycle. You literally can't make this stuff up. If I had any type of mobility issues, trying to navigate this mall would be a nightmare for me. Simon Malls should do better, they are a huge corporation that can easily afford to actually repair these recurring issues. Instead, they just keep putting on...

I very much enjoy this mall, most of all for its broad walkways and the open foyer like area that extends all the way through it like a city boulevard with stores on both sides of the street. There is a very wide variety too ranging from restaurants to optical stores to departments stores to candy stores and even a Godiva. There's also a wonderful Apple Store and an AMC theater which includes an iMac theatre. The Apple store offers an exceptional level of service and expertise. Whenever I have an issue with networking or internet access or reliability of my iMac or iPad I go there thinking it will be a repair, but they figure out that it's usually a software issue or something that can be fixed in a half hour or less. They don't want to keep our computers away from us if at all possible. Today, for example, I found out that the data transfer from my 2003 iMac G4 left some old software and settings that were preventing my newer iMac from being able to communicate with our 2012 era router and modem. One of the gurus (Daniel) at the Apple store realized this in just ten minutes of diagnosis and what I had already tried to exclude problems with our internet service. What a great customer service example. I'll also stop by at the Caribou Coffee shop and perhaps take a look at the Sleep Number store. There's also a shoe repair shop and a Verizon store as well as an ATT store. Many people from nearby homes, apartments, and senior living centers meet together at this Mall to get their exercise or group walk. Another big plus here in this Mall located in Edina is that the parking is all free included many covered areas to protect from rain and snow. It's not hard at all to visit or exit from either in comparison to some Mega Malls like the Mall of America. That's the final advantage, its accessibility. You never have to search a long time for parking because they have so much parking space. It's a nice mixture of big stores, medium sized specialty stores and all the small craft and jewelry kiosks in that wide center area. I visit it often and continue to do so because it's large enough to have most everything I need, but not so large as to be overwhelming and very noisy with huge crowds. This mall just makes shopping and browsing for ideas or for meeting for exercise human scale and...

we visited Southdale mall last Sunday specifically to see Santa. I checked the hours on their website prior and there was no notice about a break that we later found out was 110-210p. walked in to the door by Jimmy Johns and was surprised to see trash on the sidewalk in multiple places. got in long line for Santa. after arriving in line at approximately 1215, and already waiting for 10-15 minutes we were informed that Santa takes an HOUR break at 110p and that it was unlikely they would get to us by 110p but there might be a chance so my girls wanted to stay in line OF COURSE, they wanted to see Santa! So I asked, how many parties were ahead of us and about how long does each party take? The host/attendant told us about 15 were ahead of us, and each party takes 3-5 minutes. We stayed...and I regretted it because we were the first party to NOT be let in to see Santa and we couldn't wait another hour so we had to leave empty handed. My girls were heartbroken. They still believe in Santa, they're 5.5 & 7.5. I tried to talk our way in, saying that we'd be super fast and we already knew the package we'd by, most affordable is $25. needless to say VERY disappointed in the whole experience. They don't disclose the break up front, they don't disclose about how long the wait will be at any point in the line even though they have an estimate, and they don't have a minimum package under $25. We would have spent that plus the extra $10 to get the digital version. You would think in this day and age they could do better...give people a pager so they can be out shopping...isn't that the goal of the mall? to have us out shopping? instead of waiting in line? or have two Santas, one for the morning and one for the afternoon? or at the very least have the break posted online AND on location? I was and am still disgusted by the whole thing. We'll never go back to that Santa. SO many other places and locations to choose from that are SO much easier! or FREE! and...