| Location | Dallas, Texas, United States |
|---|---|
| Opening date | 1965 |
| Developer | NorthPark Development Company |
| Management | NorthPark Management Company |
| Owner | NorthPark Development Company |
| No. of stores and services | 235 |
| No. of anchor tenants | 6 |
| Total retail floor area | 2,000,000 sq ft (185,800 m2)[1] |
| No. of floors | 3 |
| Website | Official Website |
NorthPark Center is an upscale shopping mall located in Dallas, Texas (United States). The mall is located at the intersection of Loop 12 (Northwest Highway) and US 75 (North Central Expressway). The center has over 235 stores and restaurants.[2] NorthPark is the first shopping center featured on Vogue Magazine.[3] It has annual sales of more than $1 billion.[4]
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In the early 1960s, developer Raymond Nasher leased a 97-acre (390,000 m2) cotton field on the edge of Dallas and hired Eero Saarinen to design Northpark and the Dallas architecture firm Harrell and Hamilton, now known as Omniplan as the Architect of Record. Upon Sarrinen's death in 1961, Kevin Roche completed the design assignment along with Harrell and Hamilton. NorthPark Center opened in 1965, as then the largest climate-controlled retail establishment in the world, and is now owned, managed, operated and leased by husband and wife David J. Haemisegger and Nancy A. Nasher (Ray's daughter).
The American Film Institute's Dallas International Film Festival was sponsored by NorthPark Center in 2009. The event was held in the AMC NorthPark 15 movie theater center, which also hosted screenings during the festival’s first two years.[5]
The center is lauded for architecture that draws in more natural light and fits seamlessly into the original mall’s sleek, modern design. Best known for its reputation as an art museum inside a shopping center, in November 2007, Northpark Center was named as one of the seven retail wonders of the modern world along with Neiman Marcus’ store at Natick Collection in Massachusetts, Japan’s Mikimoto store in Ginza, England’s Bullring shopping center, Poland’s Złote Tarasy in Warsaw, Apple’s flagship in New York City and Italy’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II .[6]
In 2006 the former space which was vacated by Lord and Taylor was replaced with Barneys New York. The New York-based department store was the first and remains the only location in Texas. The recent expansion of Northpark attracted a wide range of famous labels to open at the shopping center: Oscar de la Renta, Roberto Cavalli, Hervé Léger, Valentino, Henri Bendel, Tod's, Salvatore Ferragamo, DeBeers, Gucci, Versace, Louis Vuitton and many more. NorthPark will also be the home for Texas' first H&M, a trendy and fast-fashion label from Sweden.[7]
2006 also marked the year that the tenth annual Fashion!Dallas/Kim Dawson Model Search competition relocated from Galleria Dallas and began to take place at NorthPark Center. This competition helps launched the careers of supermodel Erin Wasson, Mimi Roche, Chaise Mooty, Ali Michael and hundreds of other successful models.[8]
From its inception, NorthPark Center has made art an integral part of its interior landscape. NorthPark received the American Institute of Architects Award for "Design of the Decade - 1960s" as one of the first commercial centers in the United States to create space for the display of fine art.[9] NorthPark was honored again in 1992 with the A.I.A.'s 25-Year Award for Design Excellence. NorthPark's tradition of showcasing major works by world-renowned artists from Andy Warhol and Frank Stella to Jonathan Borofsky and Jim Dine continues with three recent acquisitions by NorthPark's owners, David J. Haemisegger and Nancy A. Nasher: the monumental Ad Astra, 2005, a 48-foot (15 m)-tall, 12-ton, orange steel giant sculpture by New York artist Mark di Suvero; the enormous, 21-foot (6.4 m)-tall, large-scale, stainless steel and aluminum sculpture Corridor Pin, Blue (1999), by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen; and 20 elements (2005), Joel Shapiro's vividly painted sculpture of 20 wooden blocks of varying sizes joined together.
Designed by Eero Saarinen and Kevin Roche in the early 1960s, NorthPark Center has maintained an honesty to its original design. For the most recent expansion, NorthPark's owners returned to Omniplan (Omniplan), the architectural firm that was the architect of Record executing Sarrinen's and Roche's 1960s design. The expansion turned NorthPark's original U-shape into a square design surrounding a 1.4-acre (5,700 m2) landscaped garden known as "CenterPark". Featuring a series of lawns, 41-year-old live oaks and red oaks, and a small collection of art, CenterPark doubles as a park area for visitors and customers to enjoy. This is the only shopping center in the country built around a landscaped garden.[10] NorthPark Center received both the Texas Society of Architects annual Design Award and the 25-year Design Award in 2007 for the original design by Harrell & Hamilton (now Omniplan).[11] Even at the age of 40 years, NorthPark Center has not suffered the dead mall fate of others of similar age. After a major expansion, at 2,350,000 square feet (218,000 m2), it is now the second-largest mall in Texas and the 21st-largest in the U.S. based on total square feet of retail space (gross leasable area) according to the International Council of Shopping Centers.[12][13][14]
The original anchors were Titche-Goettinger, Neiman-Marcus, and JCPenney. Titche's was renamed Joske's in 1979, in 1987 Joske's closed and became Dillard's. JCPenney was closed in the 1990s and was later demolished. Foley's built a new store on the site in 1997. In 2006 Foley's became Macy's. Neiman-Marcus is the only original anchor of the mall.
Lord and Taylor was built in 1974 and closed in 2006. Barneys New York took over some of the space in the old Lord and Taylor and Robb & Stucky took over the rest. Nordstrom was built apart of the 2005 expansion. Robb & Stucky closed in early 2010, H&M was thought to be taking over this space, but has decided to open a 2 story store next to Urban Outfitters and across from the food court
Neiman Marcus Northpark consistently compete with Neiman Marcus Beverly Hills for the number 1 ranking in sales volume while Dillard's NorthPark has traditionally been the chain's number one store.[16]
Surrounding the NorthPark area are Dallas's two major shopping centers: Highland Park Village and Galleria Dallas. NorthPark is just minutes away from the master planned development Victory Park, Dallas Arts District, Downtown Dallas, Uptown Dallas, Mockingbird Station, West Village, Forty Five Ten boutique,W Hotel Dallas, Southern Methodist University, Highland Park, Preston Hollow, and University Park.
Located in NorthPark Center is Bookmarks a Dallas Public Library, a 1,993-square-foot (185.2 m2) library for children 12 years and younger. The library is a design collaboration between award-winning Dallas architects dsgn associates and Omniplan. Bookmarks is the first children's library in the United States located in a shopping center.[17]
Situated at the intersection of one of Dallas’s busiest highways: Highway 75 to the East and a major throughway, Northwest Highway to the South. Visitors can also travel from downtown Dallas to Northpark by taking the train, which stops on the east side of the shopping center, or by taking the shuttle which stops on the west side near Nordstrom. The mall is also located right across Park Lane, a massive mixed-use development, with shops that compliment the selections at NorthPark. These factors help pull in people from all over the place.[18] NorthPark Center is considered the most popular shopping center in north Texas with over 27 million visitors a year; it’s one of the top five shopping destinations in the country according to the mall's public relations department.[19]
NorthPark's interior has been frequently used for television and film.
Dr. T and the Women, the Robert Altman film, has one scene in which the character Kate (Farrah Fawcett) visits stores in the area of the Neiman Marcus court, then is seen around the Dillard's court fountain—which she eventually finds herself in, frolicking and splashing in the buff.[20]
True Stories, a 1986 movie co-starring David Byrne, with one scene of a fashion show held at a mall in Virgil, Texas (the movie's fictional setting) during a town celebration; the interior portion of the scene was filmed in a mid-court area between Neiman Marcus and Dillard's. When the mall was reopened in 2006, The Dallas Observer used the mall's ambiance as documented in the film as a source of comparison. "The place looks like a tricked-out spaceship compared to the stark, cold NorthPark in which True Stories was filmed exactly 20 years ago. It looks like the old NorthPark--damned if you can tell difference between the old bricks and the new ones; this thing looks like it was built in a time machine--yet it's brighter too, a friendlier version of the same ol' place."[21] Amusingly, the exterior of Virgil's mall wasn't of NorthPark—the producers used the outside of the former Big Town Mall in nearby Mesquite.[22]
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