Westfield Brandon

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Mall facts and statistics
Westfield Brandon
The main entrance of Westfield Brandon

Location	Brandon, Florida, USA
Opening date	1995
Developer	Urban Shopping Centers, Inc.
Management	The Westfield Group
Owner	The Westfield Group
No. of stores and services	180
No. of anchor tenants	4
Total retail floor area	986,000 ft²
No. of floors	1 (dual-level anchor stores)
Website	http://westfield.com/brandon

Westfield Brandon, formerly known as Brandon Town Center and Westfield Shoppingtown Brandon, is a shopping mall located eight miles east of Tampa, Florida, in the upper-middle class suburban community of Brandon. The mall is owned by the Australia-based The Westfield Group, and is one of five Westfield shopping centers in the state of Florida. Westfield Brandon is directly off Interstate 75, sitting on land between State Road 60 and the Lee Roy Selmon Crosstown Expressway.

[edit] History

Originally opened in 1995 as Brandon Town Center, the mall served a million shoppers in its first seventeen days alone [1]. When it first opened, Brandon Town Center boasted 974,000 square feet of retail space. The original anchors were Sears, J.C. Penney, Burdines (now Macy's), and Dillard's.

The Westfield Group acquired the Town Center in 2002 and renamed it "Westfield Shoppingtown Brandon" in line with the other Westfield centers [2]. Currently, 986,000 square feet of space is given to retail shops and restaurants. Once the second-most visited mall in Tampa, Westfield Brandon's market share has dropped to fifth out of five malls, with 17 percent of shoppers in a 2005 Tampa Tribune survey stating that they had visited Westfield Brandon in the past month (compared to 25 percent for Tampa's mall leader, International Plaza and Bay Street).

In March 2005, the Burdines was renamed Macy's after briefly operating as Burdines-Macy's. Like all Macy's in Florida that were Burdines, the palm tree columns reminiscent of the "Burdines style" of architecture remained. The "Shoppingtown" was dropped from the name in June 2005.

On January 11, 2006, Westfield announced a 150,000 square foot expansion, adding a Dick's Sporting Goods anchor in addition to more retail outlets and restaurants, to be completed by spring 2007 [3]. Expanding the mall to include some planned pedestrian-friendly establishments has worried commuters who may have to temporarily find alternate routes to the already-congested State Road 60 and the Lee Roy Selmon Expressway. In addition, the mall's perimeter roadway encounters horrendous traffic patterns daily due to the lack of flowing entry/exit points.