Mall of the Bluffs and the empty interchange
In May 1972, the Madison Avenue interchange off I-80 looked like somewhere you drove past on the way to someplace else.
The land around it was almost all open and undeveloped, with one filling station sitting out by itself. It was years before Bucky’s took over that corner.
The idea for a mall was already old by then. In the late 1960s, the Gendler brothers controlled about 65 acres at the site and pushed plans for a future “Madison Mall”…