It was inevitable, and it's almost certainly not the last time it will happen. Someone tried to get inside the shuttered Lakeforest Mall at 701 Russell Avenue in Gaithersburg on Wednesday afternoon. Gaithersburg City police responded to the mall property at 1:35 PM. Officers arriving at the scene found evidence of forced entry. Lakeforest Mall permanently closed March 31. The mall is completely vacant, but an auction of its remaining contents is being held next month.
New mall property owner WRS, Inc. Real Estate Investments had planned to demolish the mall next year, after it had full approvals and permits from the City of Gaithersburg to move forward with its redevelopment plans for housing, shops and restaurants on the site. The company's sensible reasoning was that it could reopen the dead mall as a Plan B, should its proposal be blocked or suddenly not be viable due to a market downturn.
However, WRS recently petitioned the City for assurances of approval that would allow it to begin demolition sooner. In addition to thrillseekers and vagrants who break into abandoned properties, there is a virtual cottage industry of urbex explorers who upload videos of their trespassing exploits, and Lakeforest is a tempting target for dead mall explorers.
So, was it a break-in, as the header states, or an attempted break-in, "Someone tried to get inside" as detailed in the story? Judging from my reading it was an unsuccessful attempt.
ReplyDeleteThere was evidence of a forced entry, so someone got in somewhere, but police did not indicate where that was - the security fence or the mall building itself.
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