Warning: my mall's old security guard told me the plants were fake for 20 years and I never noticed

Oliver Mitchell · 2026-10-07T22:55:05.15222+00:00

Ran into the guy who did security at Century Plaza in Birmingham from 1994 to 2008 and he dropped a bomb on me. He said every single palm tree and ficus in that place was plastic, and the crew would pull them out twice a year to hose off the dust. I sat in that food court every weekend as a kid staring right at them and had zero clue. He also said the fountain got shut off in 2001 because the pump repair quote came back at $14,000 and the owner just said forget it. Now I'm wondering how many other dead malls out there were faking the greenery the whole time, anybody else hear something like this from an old employee?

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Warning: my mall's old security guard told me the plants were fake for 20 years and I never noticed | Dead Malls - Discusd