Southwest Center Mall
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| Southwest Center Mall | |
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| Facts and statistics | |
|---|---|
| Location | Dallas in Dallas County, Texas,  United States |
| Opening date | 1975 |
| No. of anchor tenants | 4 |
| Total retail floor area | 1,084,528 sq ft[1] (100,755 m²) |
Southwest Center Mall (formerly known as Red Bird Mall) is a distressed shopping mall located in Dallas, Texas.
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[edit] History
Southwest Center Mall, originally owned by the DeBartolo family, opened in 1975. It was, and remains, the only major shopping mall located in the southern half of Dallas. The mall's original name, Red Bird Mall, came from the Red Bird area of Dallas in which it is located.
Initially, the mall was anchored by four department stores:
- Sears, which anchored the eastern end of the mall
- J. C. Penney, which anchored the western end of the mall
- Sanger-Harris (later Foley's, now Macy's), whose store was in the middle of the mall on the northern side
- Titche's (later Joske's, then purchased by and renamed Dillard's), whose store was in the middle of the mall on the southern side
Later, Montgomery Ward added a store near the Sears location, on the same side of the mall as Dillard's. At one point the mall also featured Woolco.[2]
Many of the stores in the mall were either opening their first stores in the southern sector of Dallas, or relocated from older shopping centers in the area.
[edit] The decline
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The mall did well in the beginning, despite its location in the relatively undeveloped southern portion of Dallas. Much of its early success can be attributed to the lack of competing malls and its location near the intersection of U.S. Route 67 and Interstate 20.
Soon after its completion, the mall's customer base began to weaken due to what is known as "white flight." Competition further contributed to the mall's decline: newer malls in Arlington, Grand Prarie, and nearby Cedar Hill have all attracted shoppers away from Red Bird Mall.
DeBartolo attempted to remodel the mall to give it an updated look and to attract new tenants, but it did little to overcome the its lost customer base. In 1997, the mall was sold to NAMCO Financial, a California investment group. It was at this time that NAMCO changed the name to Southwest Center Mall in an attempt to rebrand it, but the company had no better success.
Montgomery Ward left the mall when it liquidated, and J. C. Penney closed its store in 2001.
Another possible cause of the mall's decline was the increase in rent prices of space in the mall. One former employee for a store that left revealed that, while the store was doing decent business, the price of renting store space outweighted profits.
NAMCO attempted unsuccessfully to sell the mall to General Growth Properties in 2004.
[edit] The future
The Parks at Arlington continues to draw traffic from Southwest Center, and a new open air mall known as Uptown Village [1] is being built in nearby Cedar Hill; it is scheduled to be completed in early 2008. Thus it is likely that Southwest Center Mall will continue to decline if not close completely. Dillard's closed its store in late 2007. It opened its new store in Uptown Village in the spring of 2008.
[edit] Anchors
- Burlington Coat Factory (97,000 sq. ft.)
- Macy's (196,000 sq. ft.)
- Sears (205,153 sq. ft.)
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ International Council of Shopping Centers Southwest Center Mall. Retrieved Feb 19, 2007.
- ^ Findlaw for the Public
