| Location | North Olmsted, Ohio, United States |
|---|---|
| Opening date | 1965 |
| Developer | Biskind Development Company (original) |
| Management | Westfield Group |
| Owner | Westfield Group |
| No. of stores and services | 175 |
| No. of anchor tenants | 5 |
| Total retail floor area | 1.2 million ft² |
| No. of floors | 1 |
| Website | http://westfield.com/greatnorthern |
Westfield Great Northern, formerly Great Northern Mall, is a single-level enclosed shopping mall in North Olmsted, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. Its anchor stores are Macy's, Dillard's, Sears, J. C. Penney and Dick's Sporting Goods.
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Originally, a small shopping center was opened by Saul Biskind in 1957 on what was a field of strawberries. A freestanding May Company Ohio store built to the East of the original plaza in the mid-1960s. The plaza contained a Sears (west end), Woolworths (center west), cinema, and a grocery store (east end) along with other stores. The mall was built attached to East end of the May Company building with J. C. Penney and Sears in 1976. The 1980s saw the opening of the Plaza South attached to the original strip (now renamed the Plaza), the 1986 addition of the award-winning South Court to the mall and the construction of two mid-level hotels, and several office facilities such as Corporate Center and Technology Park. These all served to feed customers into the Mall and Plazas--along with the strategic location at Lorain Avenue, Brookpark Road and Great Northern Boulevard next to the Interstate 480 freeway.
In 1980, Hexalon Real Estate, an affiliate of Rodamco, N.V. of the Netherlands became an investor in the mall. In 1991 when Hexalon bought out the remaining Biskind stake in the mall, it hired The Edward J. DeBartolo Corporation as its management company, a relationship that lasted until 2000, when Rodamco acquired Urban Shopping Centers, which assumed management. Rodamco undertook a significant upgrade and remodel of the mall in 1992-1993. The Biskind family eventually sold off the Plazas to Developers Diversified Realty Corp.
May Company Ohio was renamed Kaufmann's in 1993, and became Macy's in 2006. Dillard's was added in April 2003, expanding the South Court into a full-fledged new wing. The Westfield Group acquired the shopping center in early 2002, and renamed it "Westfield Shoppingtown Great Northern", dropping the "Shoppingtown" name in June 2005.