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Let’s start with the positive view. If you want to park close to the entrance, avoid crowds and get a salesperson’s full attention, Southridge Mall is the place to go.

Also, the hefty markdowns at some of its stores probably are for real. At this point, they’ll do anything to bring in shoppers.

I stopped at Southridge for the first time in a long time and was a bit shocked. Everybody knows the place is struggling, and retail sales everywhere are weak, but this was like walking into a sports arena a half-hour after the game is over.

On a Friday afternoon, clerks leaned on counters, the one employee at a hair salon sat in the back reading a book, and not a soul was visible in all of Fashion Bug’s considerable space.

Everything was steeply discounted at Waldenbooks, a franchise that’s being shut down nationwide by parent company Borders Group Inc.

The large space abandoned by Steve & Barry’s casts gloom over the main corridor. No stores remain in a nearby aisle.

The prime restaurant space at the food court entrance sits vacant. Several of the storefronts are occupied by non-retail organizations: a dance studio, a church, Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

Signs ask customers what stores they would like to see at Southridge, adding to the general air of desperation. And there were so few customers to read the signs. Surely it was busier on Saturday.

Southridge opened in 1975 with the whole South Side to draw from, plus all of the people driving into Des Moines every day from Carlisle and Indianola and so forth.

Since then, the neighborhood has grown. An impressive number of houses and apartment buildings popped up to the west. The mall has added a Target store, and a Hy-Vee Inc. supermarket stands a few yards away.

On the other hand, now we have the Jordan Creek Town Center factor. That mall and all of the other retail outlets it spawned – West Glen and Galleria, in particular – have enough gravity to yank shoppers a few miles west, even if they’re driving past Southridge when struck by the urge to purchase.

One wonders if the place can snap back. Montgomery Ward didn’t work out as an anchor, but Younkers, JCPenney and Sears are still there. Senior marketing manager Kelly Thevenot reported that mall management is talking to large national tenants for the Steve & Barry’s space and also hopes to announce a new restaurant tenant soon.

But Iowa State University Extension economist Meghan O’Brien thinks Southridge was born to struggle. It came into being as a local mall – conservative in size with middle-class stores – just as regional malls were preparing to take center stage. Regionals and then “lifestyle centers” offered more stores and more exclusive stores. Local malls were left to compete with Target, Wal-Mart and the like.

“Those retailers duplicate the product mix you find in a mall like Southridge,” said O’Brien, who keeps track of retail matters.

Big-box operations such as The Home Depot Inc. and Best Buy Co. Inc. have built stores not far away on Southeast 14th Street. Would it have helped Southridge to get them in the outlot spots? “Outlot stores don’t get people inside the mall,” O’Brien said.

Unfortunately, she can’t come up with a sunny forecast. “I don’t think Southridge can sustain itself,” O’Brien said. For similar situations, she would refer you to www.deadmalls.com.

If Southridge were to close, what would become of all that space? Old Capitol Mall in Iowa City was converted to a mixed-use facility, O’Brien noted, but it sits downtown next to the University of Iowa campus. She doesn’t see that as a viable option for Southridge. If such a big chunk of commercial real estate goes dark, she said, “it causes problems for surrounding tenants; it affects commercial property values. I don’t know what the answer is.”