The sight of construction materials outside the Warren Mall is a welcome one.

Roof work isn’t cheap, so it certainly indicates there are new paying customers on their way into the building.

Even though malls will likely never regain the prominence they once held in our daily lives – especially for those who were teenagers during the heyday of hanging out at the mall with friends – it’s good to see physical improvements at the building along with the idea of potential new tenants.

The work is meaningful for another reason. The Warren Mall is one of the first things you see coming into the Warren area. The visual sight of the mall sends a message of disinvestment to visitors and, sometimes, to those of us who live here and pass the building every day. It also doesn’t help the businesses in the mall to attract new customers.

Even if it won’t be the Warren Mall of the 1980s, we certainly want to put a better foot forward than what visitors to our community see when driving down Route 62. That’s especially true as the Kinzua Area Discovery Center continues to fundraise to build a new building in the area. Malls have been forced to change with the times just as cities’ downtowns were forced to change with the times when malls drove the shift from downtown shopping to shopping in the outskirts of town in areas with easier parking and a critical mass of retail options. What’s happening at the Warren Mall is a reinvention that is happening around the country – and it starts with small things like physical reinvestment. The investment in the Warren Mall is needed and welcomed, and we look forward to seeing what potential new tenants may be moving in.