Inside the eerie abandoned mall where Amazon will reportedly build a giant new facility

Seph Lawless

An Amazon facility could soon replace a dead Ohio mall.

• Amazon is reportedly planning to build a 695,383-square-foot facility on the site of the shuttered Rolling Acres Mall in Akron, Ohio.
• Rolling Acres Mall fell victim to declining shopper traffic and permanently closed in 2013.
• Former tenants include Macy's, JCPenney, Target, and Sears.

Amazon is reportedly taking over the site of a once-thriving mall in Akron, Ohio, that was shut down and abandoned after a decade-long decline.

Amazon is planning to build a 695,383-square-foot facility at the site of the former Rolling Acres Mall, according to blueprints of the project obtained by the Akron Beacon Journal/Ohio.com.

Poignant images of the mall's decay over the years have come to symbolize the era of retail disruption known as the retail apocalypse. The mall was largely demolished by the city of Akron in 2016. 

Here are some of images of the mall that were taken before its destruction. The photos were taken by photographers Seph Lawless and Nicholas Eckhart.