Demolition begins for 'Blues Brothers' mall

HARVEY (AP) – A suburban Chicago mall made famous for its high-speed demise in the 1980s “The Blues Brothers” movie is meeting its real-life end after years of decay and delay.

Gov. Pat Quinn announced Wednesday that demolition has officially begun at Dixie Square Mall in south suburban Harvey. The vacant mall has been an eyesore ever since police cars unceremoniously smashed through it 30 years ago in the iconic film starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd.

“The demolition of the Dixie Square Mall will help revitalize the local economy and create much needed jobs,” Quinn said in a statement. “Although we will always remember the Dixie Mall as the location for one of the most iconic scenes in ‘The Blues Brothers’ movie, it is time for this now vacant building to be torn down to make way for more economic development for the Harvey community.”

Quinn set aside $4 million in federal disaster recovery funds for the project in 2010. Work to clear the property had previously stopped when Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan sued Harvey over asbestos removal in 2005.

The mall, which opened in 1966, closed in 1979, then shortly thereafter was featured in “The Blues Brothers.” In the scene, Aykroyd nonchalantly drives the singing duo’s car through the plate glass windows of several stores inside the mall, with police cars in hot pursuit and shoppers scurrying to get out of the way.

Harvey officials repeatedly have tried to redevelop the site to boost the local economy, promoting the mall’s strategic location for commerce along a busy highway. But ownership of the mall has changed hands four times in the last six years.

“Now we have the opportunity to bring that retail right here to our city,” Harvey Mayor Eric Kellogg told the Chicago Tribune. “The former Dixie Square Mall will truly be a memory of ‘The Blues Brothers’ and not a sign of blight and decay.”