Main Entrance |
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| Location | Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States |
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| Opening date | 1961 |
| No. of stores and services | 3 |
| No. of anchor tenants | 2 |
| No. of floors | 2 |
The Winrock Shopping Center is a shopping mall located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States. The mall is anchored by Dillard's and Bed Bath and Beyond. Currently the mall is vacant except for the anchor tenants who own their own spaces.[1] Redevelopment is expected and pending.
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In 1961, Winrock Shopping center was completed as a joint venture between the soon to be Arkansas governor Winthrop Rockefeller and the University of New Mexico on a sandy lot at the edge of I-40. The development included a covered shopping center (the first for Albuquerque) with Safeway, J.C. Penney, and Montgomery Ward. There was also a movie theater and a hotel on the premises. The mall was built as an outdoor mall with a furnished canopy roof above the main stretch of the mall and acres of parking on all sides. This design allowed for a pleasant shopping experience in the dry summer heat as well as the cold high-desert winters.
The mall is bounded by the busy I-40 freeway to the south with off-ramps to Louisiana Boulevard to the west of the site. Shortly after Winrock’s opening, competition moved in a few blocks away. Coronado Center was built in 1964 but didn’t make too large of an impact at the time. Winrock remained the destination of choice and was even the birthplace of the now famous Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. Over the decades the mall underwent renovations and additions which added an additional floor, an improved food-court, better lighting, bigger anchors, and increased the number of retail spaces to around ninety. At either end of the mall are men’s and a women’s Dillard’s department store each with three stories and ample space. In its prime the mall was always bustling with people clothes shopping, eating at the food court, or playing at the arcade, but beginning in the late 1990s the mall began a decline and vacancy rates began to climb. The writing was on the wall by the year 2000, but as late as 2003 temporary seasonal leasing had been able to fill 100% of available spaces.[2] By 2005, tenants' leases were not renewed in anticipation of redevelopment of the property.[3] Today, forty-eight years after Winrock opened its doors, the mall is clearly dead and decaying rapidly. The only remaining stores today are Dillard’s, Bed, Bath and Beyond, and a Sports Authority, each of which own their respective spaces and bring in sufficient retail traffic on their own.
The mostly abandoned shopping center was used as a set for the filming of the 2009 American comedy film Observe and Report.[4]
For nearly twenty years, developers and the city government have had their eye on Winrock’s 80 acres (320,000 m2). New Jersey based PruWinrock LLC, the firm that owned the property began paving the way for new development and proposed “an open-air large-format community center.” This new incarnation would include high-end retail, a state-of-the-art movie theater, apartment condos, and plenty of parking. The new center would include 450,000 square feet (42,000 m2) of retail space that promised to bring high-end stores that were not found in New Mexico previously. Ground breaking for phase I was to begin in 2003 to be completed two years later. PruWinrock hit the first of many snags when its approval was denied by the planning commission for additional on and off-ramps to neighboring I-40 on the grounds that they had not completed a required traffic study.
Over the following years there were numerous false starts. Increasing construction and material costs were cited as a major factor in the delays. With each delay, retailers that had initially been on-board with Winrock but were anxious to break into Albuquerque’s up-and-coming market were migrating to nearby “ABQ Uptown.” ABQ Uptown, or “Q” for short, was referred to as a “Lifestyle Center,” and once it broke ground it cast the future of the Winrock mall and PruWinrock further into doubt. Phase I consisted of retail along Louisiana Boulevard and Phases II & III consisted of residential development behind phase I and away from the main roads.
In 2007, after much public disappointment over failure to fix the situation, PruWinrock sold the property to an Albuquerque based group GK Partners LLC for an undisclosed amount. Since that time, significant progress has been made on both the masterplan and furthering the process. The new developers held community meetings to showcase the new plans in an effort to garner their approval and ask for their support.[3] The current presented masterplan includes 1,500,000 square feet (140,000 m2) of new office, retail, restaurant, residential units, and a hotel.[5] Also included are a 70,000-square-foot (6,500 m2) movie theater (including IMAX), a grocery store, parks, plazas, and over 6000 parking spaces. Existing flagship stores like Dillard’s and Bed Bath and Beyond are to remain and continue as anchors but in a whole new context. The new plan is much more densely urban than previous plans. It includes housing sitting atop retail stores, both which face narrower pedestrian-friendly streets as opposed to vast acres of asphalt parking lot. The first phase of the project is currently projected to be ready for occupancy as early as 2010.[6]