A former Stuckey's in Nowhere Land
So, a bit of a spoiler for upcoming feature content on MyFloridaRetail, but I recently completed a trip out to Polk County to visit two dead malls- Lakeshore Mall in Sebring, and Eagle Ridge Mall in Lake Wales. However, to get there, I first had to brave the untamed wilds. Clip: Spongebob S1E5a "We're In The Middle of Nowhere!" While people tend to think of Florida as a carpet of suburbia, developed in all directions, there's large swaths of the state that are basically undeveloped, except for very scattered houses and farms. They're the "flyover country" of Florida, except in our case it's "drive through country". One of the most significant gaps is the area between the Brevard County line and St Cloud in Osceola County where civilization starts to return. Now, if you swoop south around St Cloud, then you get even more desolation, and you have basically nothing until you hit Lake Wales. Measuring from the outlets on the edge of Vero Beach...