CLEVELAND, Ohio - I can still remember the little lunchboxes, shaped like ovens. And the chicken pot pies and fruit cups and milkshakes. But most of all I remember how fancy Higbee's Zodiac Room seemed all those years ago when my mom would take me to Parmatown for a treat. Especially when we got a table near the balcony overlooking the sparkling mall.

It was the epitome of glamour to a young girl. I realize now we lived less than 5 miles away from Parmatown, but it seemed a big adventure to get dressed up and go out to eat and shop.

After lunch, maybe we'd look at the pretty dresses, or stop in the salon. Going to Parmatown was a big deal back in the late 1970s and '80s. It was the heyday for the mall that was built in 1956 and enclosed in 1965.

My generation missed out on the department stores downtown, but we had the malls. Thees were our defining shopping and leisure experiences - from elementary school trips with mom and dad to later years of being dropped off in a station wagon at the entrance with firm instruction to meet back there "5 minutes after the movie ends!"

Today that Higbee's space is a Walmart. Parmatown itself is gone, demolished after a lingering death to make room for the new Shoppes at Parma lifestyle center. The former belle of the south side - once home to two major department stores and two wings of boutiques - had become a clearing house for cut-rate dress shops, cheap nail salons, T-shirt airbrush joints and strange gift shops selling terrifying made-in-China dolls, belly dancing outfits and crystals. Like many malls of its era, it was a victim of changing shopping trends, a surrounding neighborhood in decline and a location far from highways that didn't fit well with modern shoppers.

Long gone too is the May Co., which had a second and third life as Kaufmann's and Macy's before being turned into a pile of rubble. Higbee's - opened in 1967 - became Dillard's before Walmart, a sad slow descent from upscale fashion to a discount superstore.

The food court was one of the last areas of the mall to go, demolished earlier this month. Twisted beams and rubble are all that remains of the former site of Orange Julius and Houlihan's and Famous Gyros, and even an Antonio's back in the day. When I outgrew the Zodiac Room with mom, this is where my friends and I hung out, before a giggly trip to Spencer's Gifts, or to look at trendy dresses at Merry- Go-Round, or maybe cassettes or CDs at Recordtown.

Those '80s stores themselves were a step down from the original mall tenants of the '60s, places like Miles shoes and Calvin's and Winkelman's which, like Higbee's, lived on for several decades at the mall. I thought it the pinnacle of chic in my teen years; I babysat for a single mom who was a buyer at the store, just about the most glamorous job imaginable.

My parents didn't let us go to Aladdin's Arcade, but I did go to many movies at the theaters, then considered way classier than the nearby Parma or Mercury theater in Middleburg Heights. I wondered what "Pink Floyd's The Wall" was, but couldn't stay to see it at midnight. I even remember the theaters short-lived time as a Cinema Grill in the early 2000s, before local chain Cleveland Cinemas took it over before the last picture show in 2004.

I've only seen pictures of some of the other famous early inhabitants of Parmatown. I'm glad I never saw when a poor porpoise named Konhee Joe lived in a water tank in the mall, and somehow I missed Ringo the monkey at Mr. Ed's and Faflik's. Teddi's restaurant and cocktail lounge was long gone by my era, but hey we had Roy Rogers and they had great fries.

Today the Shoppes at Parma has some pretty great fries at the new-retro Fast Eddie's diner, an anchor restaurant that pays homage to the center's past in its menu and decor. There's a Panera now, too, and a Chipotle and a huge Dick's Sporting Goods, and a Jimmy John's. Planned retailers include Ulta cosmetics - and there's even a Sephora.

With its open air design, the shopping center is not all that different from its 1956 design, either. But this Parmatown, er, the Shoppes at Parma, is just that - a shopping center. Once upon a time, Parmatown was a magical place for south siders, a place to shop and socialize and dream, not unlike Euclid Avenue for the generations before us.

Former Parmanian Lidia Trempe sums it up best.

"It was the heart of Parma. ... What was more glamorous than going upstairs at Higbees? ... It was such an incredible luxury when we were able to go up there. I thought it was the fanciest in the world. You would have thought we were in Paris."