As someone who loves going to the mall and looking around each unique store, I have been to many of the places around the Indianapolis area. With mall culture dying in the United States, good shopping centers are a rare occurrence. They are either too expensive, do not have good stores or outright dangerous to go to.
My favorite mall around Indy is The Shops at Perry Crossing outdoor shopping center in Plainfield. Personally, I think it is amazing because of the selection of stores.
Firstly, this mall has one of the few remaining Orange Leaf frozen yogurt places in Indiana. It also has a Hot Topic, Spencers, Barnes n Noble and an AMC movie theater. The Barnes n Noble is gigantic, and their selection of books and music is great.
Additionally, the way this mall is laid out is much better than other outdoor malls I have been to. There are cute places to sit, easily accessible walkways and fountains.
Continuing with outdoor shopping centers, my second favorite mall is Hamilton Town Center in Noblesville. While it does not have the same variety of stores as other malls, it is very spacious and fun to walk through. Slowly, the mall has been integrating more popular stores like Sephora and American Eagle.
Additionally, there is a newer strip center connected to the outer part of the mall which contains shops like Five Below and Micheal’s. While this mall has good places to shop, it gets quite boring to be in for a long time. There is also a severe lack of affordable places to eat inside the mall.
While I personally cannot afford much inside this mall, the Keystone Mall is my third favorite. I really like it because of its atmosphere, and seeing all of the places completely out of my budget that people are shopping in. This place includes stores such as Gucci, Gap, American Eagle, Urban Outfitters and Apple. It is a good place to hang out without having to spend money, since window shopping is very fun. However, the food places are lacking, and outrageously expensive.
Another mall that is good is the Edinburg Fashion Mall in Edinburg. This place is good because many of the stores are outlet stores, meaning big brands sell older clothes for cheaper than they usually would. I personally do not love this mall because of how far away it is from my home, and it is also very horrible to walk around. Every store is painted a headache-inducing white, and there is no greenery or common areas. The store selection is also just not the stores I am looking for when I go to the mall.
Finally, my least favorite mall in Indy is the Castleton Mall. I am sure many would agree with my opinion, because of how bad this shopping center’s reputation is. While the selection of shops and restaurants is actually very good, the environment inside the mall is terrible. Castleton Mall is infamous for being a place of violence. Almost every other week, there is either a shooting or violent act committed on the property. This causes me serious anxiety when shopping there, and deters me from going almost at all.
As someone who has been going to Castleton Mall my entire life, seeing the difference between how the environment of this mall used to be to now is very disheartening. Many stores have closed and there is a severely decreasing amount of customers who come to shop. It is not a
