Prestonwood Town Center

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Prestonwood Town Center is a 62-acre retail shopping center located at the northeast corner of Beltline Road and Montfort Drive in Dallas, Texas. The center is scheduled for a grand opening in the spring of 2007; however, several tenants opened for business in 2006. Major tenants will include Barnes & Noble, Circuit City, CompUSA, Office Depot, and Wal-Mart.

[edit] History

The center occupies the site of a shopping mall that was also officially named Prestonwood Town Center, but which was informally known in the area as Prestonwood Mall. The mall opened with much fanfare in 1979 featuring anchor stores Neiman Marcus, Lord & Taylor, J.C. Penney, Joske's (which became Dillard's in 1987), and Montgomery Ward. Wards departed in 1985 and was replaced by Mervyns.

In 1982, Galleria Dallas opened nearby with anchor stores Macy's, Marshall Field's, and Saks Fifth Avenue. The next year, Bloomingdale's opened at nearby Valley View Center. The competition began to take its toll on Prestonwood. Additionally, by 1994, the mall had become a notorious hangout for teens, drawn by the large food court and skating rink.

A renovation announced in 1996 never materialized, although by that time many of the stores still featured their original interiors. In September 1997, J.C. Penney closed its store, followed shortly by Mervyns. By 1999, Neiman Marcus and Lord & Taylor were the only two tenants remaining in the center, and they had already announced plans to relocate to The Shops at Willow Bend, a new mall under construction in nearby Plano.

The year 2000 brought a new owner to the Prestonwood Town Center: Goldman Sachs' Archon Group announced their intention to turn the mall into a telecommunication center called Genisus Dallas North. The plans never fully came to fruition, as only half the center was ever completed. By October 2003, Archon dropped their plans for Genisus and announced that they would demolish the mall structure and replace it with an open-air retail shopping center.^[1] By summer 2004, the mall had been completely demolished.