Columbia Mall (Grand Forks)

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Mall facts and statistics
Columbia Mall

Location	Grand Forks, North Dakota
Opening date	August 2, 1978
Developer	Dayton Hudson Corporation
Owner	GK Development, Inc.
No. of stores and services	70+
No. of anchor tenants	3
Total retail floor area	710,000 square feet
No. of floors	1
Website	shopcolumbiamall.com

Columbia Mall is an enclosed regional shopping mall in the city of Grand Forks, North Dakota and is located at the intersection of 32nd Avenue South and Columbia Road. It is the largest mall within 70 miles. It opened in 1978 and was developed by the Dayton Hudson Corporation (now Target Corporation). The company anchored the mall with one of its Dayton's department stores as well as one of its Target discount stores. The Columbia Mall Target store was the first Target that was built as the anchor of an enclosed shopping center.^[1]

Today, Columbia Mall houses three department store anchors (Macy's, J.C. Penney, and Sears), a 460-seat food court, and over 70 smaller stores. GK Development, Inc. of Barrington, Illinois is the current owner of the mall and is in the process of updating it and expanding its offerings. The new Dakota Cafe food court and a children's play area both opened in the fall of 2005 and there has been discussion of a multi-screen cinema possibly opening in the future.

1 History
2 Current anchors
3 See also
4 Notes
5 External links

[edit] History

Dayton Hudson experienced fierce competition for a new mall in the city of Grand Forks in 1975.^[2] While their proposal was to build a mall at the intersection of 32nd Avenue South and Columbia Road, Inland Construction of Edina, Minnesota wanted to build a mall at 32nd Avenue South and Washington Street (one mile east of the Dayton Hudson site), which was quickly dismissed, while a group of local investors and Farber-Kelley Ltd. of Toronto advanced a proposal for a mall at Demers Avenue and 42nd Street to be called "Marketplace West". While Marketplace West was initially preferred by the city planning department, a referendum was called to annex Dayton Hudson's proposed Columbia Mall site to the city. When it passed, the city council interpreted it as a public endorsement of the Columbia Mall project. Interestingly, the Marketplace West site would later become the home of the Alerus Center arena and convention center.

Columbia Mall opened on August 2, 1978. It was developed by Dayton Hudson Corporation at a cost of around $20 million. On opening day, the mall had 571,800 ft² of floor space. The anchor stores of the new mall included both Dayton Hudson-owned Target and Dayton's stores as well as a J.C. Penney store. The Columbia Mall Target store was the first Target that was built as the anchor of an enclosed shopping center. The slogan "Meet me at Columbia Mall" was heavily used to promote the mall during its early days.^[3] Television commercials for the mall included a song that used the slogan. During the Christmas season, the slogan was changed to "Christmas at Columbia Mall" and television commercials aired that carried a special version of the song.

In 2000, a Sears department store opened as an anchor of the mall. Also, Target closed their Columbia Mall store in 2001 and opened a SuperTarget store in the new Grand Forks Marketplace mall a few blocks west of Columbia Mall. The space that the old Target used to occupy is still vacant and finding a new anchor has proved troublesome for Columbia Mall. In 2001, the original Dayton's store was converted into a Marshall Field's store. In September of 2006, Marshall Fields was again converted, this time into a Macy's store. Today, the only anchor that bears the same name as it did when the mall first opened in 1978 is the J.C. Penney store.

The mall received national attention in 2003 after being the site of a high-profile crime.^[4] On November 22, 2003, University of North Dakota student Dru Sjodin was leaving her job at Victoria's Secret when she was abducted by Alfonso Rodriguez, Jr.. Rodriquez crossed state lines into Minnesota with Sjodin where he brutally assaulted, raped, and murdered her. He was convicted of the crime on August 30, 2006.