From dying to living: How one nonprofit reimagined vacant Jasper Mall space
Raising Arrows employees prepare meals for hundreds of children in Walker County. Meals can now be cooked in a larger space in the Jasper Mall. (Nicole Smith/Daily Mountain Eagle)
As stores in shopping malls continue to close across the country, a space at the Jasper Mall in Walker County is being reimagined as a safe haven for youths.
The decades-old Jasper Mall was once a bustling shopping hub for the residents of Walker and surrounding counties; however, since two of its three anchor stores closed in 2017, both the north and south ends of the mall have remained dark. The mall was the subject of a recent documentary film.
Raising Arrows, a nonprofit community feeding and after-school program in Walker County, is bringing new light to one of the mall’s vacant spaces, which once housed J.C. Penney.
Raising Arrows moved from smaller quarters and now fills the back section of the old retail space. A church, Worship Life Jasper, has filled more of the 54,000-square-foot former department store. A coffee shop, a children’s fun zone, and the Jasper Academy private school and learning center will also be inside the old store.
A large group of people came together to renovate an old retail space in the Jasper Mall that now houses a church and a nonprofit. (Worship Life Jasper)
Jennifer Lee, president of Raising Arrows, said the nonprofit will be able to serve the community in the new space, just as J.C. Penney served customers for generations.
Raising Arrows became a nonprofit in 2018 and originally served meals to 40 children in Jasper each week. Now it serves about 5,000 free meals weekly to children all over Walker County.
The old J.C. Penney store has provided the much-needed space the Raising Arrows team needs to continue its community service efforts.
Jasper’s mayor, David O’Mary, has been outspoken about his desire for the Jasper Mall to be revitalized. He said seeing Raising Arrows use the J.C. Penney space makes him optimistic about possible uses for other vacant buildings in the city.
“It seems that it will allow them to expand and be more efficient,” O’Mary said of Raising Arrows. “That’s just a real plus for our city, and they do great work.”
Repurposing the Jasper Mall space turned into a community effort. Volunteers with the Rotary Club of Jasper helped Raising Arrows move into the space and, prior to the move, employees of two school systems volunteered to feed children who were out of school due to the pandemic.
“It’s really been a county effort of everybody working together to make this growth happen,” Lee said, crediting schools, law enforcement, local organizations and others for supporting Raising Arrows’ efforts.
The Jasper Mall parking lot was turned into a fun zone for children, thanks to the nonprofit called Raising Arrows, which occupies a portion of what was once the J.C. Penney store at the mall. (Raising Arrows)
Lee and her husband, Wayne Lee, are pastors for Worship Life Jasper, which is settling into the old retail space at Jasper Mall. Wayne is thankful the church and the nonprofit can locate in what was once a vibrant social space and bring the community together through their vision of reinvigorating an abandoned building.
“This is going to be a place for the community to come and enjoy themselves,” he said. “What we’re trying to create is a place our community can be proud of.”
The Jasper Mall made headlines this year, with filmmakers Bradford Thomason and Brett Whitcomb making an observational documentary about the mall. The roughly 90-minute film, “Jasper Mall,” was designed to take viewers on a yearlong journey of what the day-to-day atmosphere looks like in a struggling mall.
Stores closed and people had lost their jobs by the end of the film, but there were glimmers of what the mall continues to offer, other than retail. For one couple in the film, a carnival outside the mall, as well as its food court, offered a place to simply enjoy each other’s company. The documentary also featured seniors who continue to meet and enjoy playing dominoes at Jasper Mall each day.
“People who are interested in things like dying shopping malls gravitate toward this kind of content,” Thomason said of the film. “I think what makes the film unique and what makes people like it is that we actually talk to people in the mall and get to know some different characters, and most people respond positively to it.”
The “Jasper Mall” documentary can be viewed on multiple streaming platforms.
While “Jasper Mall” provided a gripping visual on how shopping malls are struggling, malls continue to be reimagined around the country, and the possibilities are many for rural malls and those in large metropolitan areas.
A report from the CCIM Institute titled “Retail e-Volution: Predictions for 2025” detailed the real estate value of retail spaces, including shopping malls, and the potential for repurposing vacated stores.
“Many vacated malls, shopping centers and big-box stores have desirable location attributes – frontage along primary commercial arterials and public transit routes, proximity to employment centers and site configuration or building design that’s well-suited for adaptive reuse,” CCIM’s K.C. Conway wrote. “Conversion of these buildings is ideal in meeting the ongoing demand for affordable housing, industrial warehouse utilization, off-hospital campus medical use and even co-working office space.”
The report also addressed the notion that malls are becoming a thing of the past.
“The mall is not obsolete – it is just going over the top on entertainment offerings,” Conway wrote, discussing how “mega-malls” are being built to offer a variety of entertainment options outside of retail.
Like many malls across the country, Jasper Mall has struggled in recent years. Many of its retailers have closed, and only one anchor tenant, Belk, remains. Over a dozen other businesses are still in the mall – some individually owned, some national retailers.
Raising Arrows and Worship Life Jasper could, perhaps, be a driving force to encourage others to fill vacant mall spaces.
“I think the best days of this mall are ahead of it,” Wayne Lee said.
This story is part of a program funded by the Alabama Power Foundation and administered by the Alabama Press Association Journalism Foundation to support journalists who have been adversely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
