When it opened in 2002, Triangle Town Center drew 1,500 shoppers before sunrise, all of them eager to browse the state’s first Saks Fifth Avenue, gawk at the mall’s 18-foot indoor waterfall and stroll down the artificial river that burbled alongside Ted’s Montana Grill.
Raleigh’s boosters spared no exaggeration when they declared their new retail hub would form a “second downtown” along the Outer Loop, pulling in customers clear to Rocky Mount to the east and Virginia to the north.
Never happened.
Two decades later, the North Raleigh mall has decayed enough to attract “urban explorers” — amateur filmmakers who post YouTube videos while wandering through abandoned eyesores…