In comparison to malls in areas such as—well, anywhere really—Joliet’s mall comes up short in almost every aspect. Being only one-story, lacking popular stores, and having an excessive amount of pointless stores, the Westfield Louis Joliet Mall can hardly be called a functioning mall.

When it comes to fashionable clothing stores, our mall would rank last in variety. Although Fox Valley, Orland, Bolingbrook, and Woodfield all have a Forever 21, H&M, A’Gaci, Urban Outfitters, and Wet Seal, the Joliet mall seems to have omitted these stores. Clearly, fashion-savvy teenagers in the area don’t deserve to have access to more clothes than Charlotte Russe. Brand name seekers also have room to complain due to the lack of Hollister, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Gilly Hicks. Granted, the mall simply doesn’t have room for all of these luxuries, but that brings me to my next point.

Why do we have so many cell-phone stores? AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, U.S Cellular, Best Buy Mobile and the kiosks:  CLEAR, Verizon and T-Mobile (again). If we could eliminate at least half of these, the mall would have ample room for the fashion stores mentioned, or a kid-friendly store considering last Saturday was The Disney Store’s last day. There’s no way our town buys more cell phones than toys, or anything else, for that matter. Keep in mind that we also have eight fine jewelry stores.  Nothing screams Joliet residents than fine jewelry.

Why do we have such odd stores? Select Comfort, a mattress store? Who goes to the mall to buy a mattress? Not only did we have an awkward massage section in the middle of the mall, but now it has transformed into its’ own entire store. Why?! As a sports fan, this next question might come off as a shocker, but why is Plaques Plus still open? How many plaques of Michael Jordan can you really buy?

Why do we have two Gloria Jeans, yet no Starbucks? I’m just going to let that question stand alone.

The food court is adequate with its typical mall eateries, yet could still use a Cinnabon, Chick-fil-A, Jamba Juice, and Wendy’s.  These aren’t big demands, considering some malls have The Cheesecake Factory and Rainforest Café.

There are several great new improvements about our mall such as the new movie theater, MC Sports, ALDO, Toe Heaven, Corner Shoppe (ice cream), and Furry Babies. Do these positives outweigh the negatives? The answer is no, and will always be no, until the day that Westfield Louis Joliet Mall management sits down, has some Gloria Jean’s coffee from either of the two locations, and decides to tear it down to rebuild a bigger, better, (even decent), mall in its place.