I used to work right around the corner from that mall. It was on deaths door for damn near a decade with only a handful of stores keeping it afloat. I'm pretty sure they closed it down for good right around the time they used it to film season 3 of Stranger Things.
I worked as a maintenance guy around 1986 or '87. Back then you could smoke in the mall and they had ashtrays inset in every trashcan lid. We used to go around with our bare hands and remove the cigarette butts. By today's standards the thought seems insane.
I remember someone shot a bunch of soap into the fountain and it made bubbles ten feet high before someone turned off the pumps.
It's eerie to see it like this and in Stranger Things.
I hate when escalators are blocked off for no reason... I was at a mall where they were all blocked off so you had to go to the entire other end of the mall to use the one elevator for the entire mall!
Unless they're actively getting worked on, just leave them as stationary stairs if they're not working! Just makes the entire place more unfriendly to people visiting...
I'm certainly not an expert either, but logically an immobile escalator disconnected from power is (to borrow the Mitch Hedberg bit) simply stairs! They don't block off stairways in buildings and force everyone to use the elevator...