NorthPark Center

NorthPark Center

Location	Dallas, Texas,  United States
Coordinates	32°52′7″N 96°46′24″W / 32.86861°N 96.77333°W / 32.86861; -96.77333Coordinates: 32°52′7″N 96°46′24″W / 32.86861°N 96.77333°W / 32.86861; -96.77333
Address	8687 North Central Expressway
Opening date	1965
Developer	NorthPark Development Company
Management	NorthPark Management Company
Owner	NorthPark Development Company
Architect	Omniplan
No. of stores and services	225[1]
No. of anchor tenants	7
Total retail floor area	2,000,000 sq ft (185,800 m2)[2]
Parking	9,000[3]
No. of floors	3
Website	Official Website

NorthPark Center is an large enclosed 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.^[4] NorthPark is the first shopping center featured on Vogue Magazine.^[5] It has annual sales of more than $1 billion.^[6] NorthPark Center is ranked at number nineteen for one of the largest malls in the United States, based on esri.com.^[7]

History

In the early 1960s, developer Raymond Nasher leased a 97-acre (390,000 m²) cotton field on the edge of Dallas and hired E.G Hamilton of OMNIPLAN Architects (then Harrell+Hamilton Architects). 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). In 2006, NorthPark opened its doors to an expansion that more than doubled the size of the existing center. NorthPark brought back the original architecture firm, OMNIPLAN Architects, to ensure the original architecture was respected and enhanced. The expansion included a new collection of specialty retail shots and a third-floor 16-screen AMC theater. The new two-story expansion provided easy circulation by forming a continuous loop through the entire complex.

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.^[8]

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 store in New York City and Italy’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II .^[9]

The recent expansion of NorthPark attracted a wide range of famous labels to open boutiques exclusive to the Texas market, including: Oscar de la Renta, Roberto Cavalli, Hublot, Hugo Boss, Tod's, Officine Panerai, Eileen Fisher, Elie Tahari, Helen Ficalora, Tourbillon, Joe's Jeans, The North Face, J. Crew (Men's Shop), Spanx (Opening Spring 2014), and Na Hoku.

The Center also boasts many stores that are exclusive in the Dallas market, including Bottega Veneta, Burberry, Cartier, CH Carolina Herrera, David Yurman, Diesel (brand), Valentino, Salvatore Ferragamo, Versace, Henri Bendel, Splendid, Omega SA, Stuart Weitzman, Sperry Top-Sider, TAG Heuer, Ted Baker, Tumi Inc., and Wolford.

NorthPark is the home of Texas' first H&M, a trendy and fast-fashion label from Sweden.^[10]

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.^[11]

Art in the mall

Dillard's at NorthPark Center

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.^[12] 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.

Architecture

Nordstrom at NorthPark Center

Designed by OMNIPLAN Architects 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 Architects, the architectural firm responsible for the 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.^[13] 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 OMNIPLAN Architects.^[14] 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.^[15][16][17]

Eero Saarinen was hired to design the original Nieman Marcus store; however upon Sarrinen's death in 1961, Kevin Roche completed the design assignment.

Reception

The mall received generally positive reviews and received an 4.5 star rating out of five, based on yelp.com, many visitors gave compliments to its high-end stores and restaurants.^[18]

Anchors

Foley's (now Macy's) at NorthPark Center in Dallas.

Anchors

• AMC NorthPark 15 (80,000 sq ft.)
• Dillard's - In former Titche-Goettinger then became Joske's Space (299,500 sq ft.)
• Forever 21
• H&M
• Macy's - Macy's North Texas flagship store, in former Foley's space (250,000 sq ft.)
• Neiman Marcus (214,000 sq ft.)
• Nordstrom - (200,000 sq ft.)

Original anchors

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.

Store rankings

Neiman Marcus NorthPark consistently competes 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.^[19]

Shopping centers around NorthPark

Surrounding the NorthPark area are Dallas's two major shopping centers: The Shops at Park Lane and Galleria Dallas (both of which have undergone a renovation designed by retail architects OMNIPLAN Architects, the same architects responsible for NorthPark's heralded design). NorthPark is just minutes away from the master planned development Victory Park, Dallas Arts District, Downtown Dallas, Uptown Dallas, Mockingbird Station, West Village, Dallas Ritz Carlton, Dallas W Hotel, Southern Methodist University, Highland Park/Highland Park Village, Preston Hollow, and University Park.

Public library

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 design associates and OMNIPLAN Architects. Bookmarks is the first children's library in the United States located in a shopping center.^[20]

Location

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 east side near Macy's. 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.^[21] 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.^[22]

Television and film location

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.^[23]

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."^[24] 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.^[25]

When the shopping center first opened television station WFAA-TV Channel 8 built a studio the broadcast local television shows Sump'n Else and Away We Go. Sump'n Else was a local music bandstand program starring KLIF-AM DJ Ron Chapman and local teen idol television and radio broadcaster Ralph Baker Jr who also hosted a show on KLIF-AM while doing Sump'n Else. The station had formed a television dance group called The Little Group. Before the station had a television bandstand show called The Group And Chapman which was broadcast from WFAA Communications Center Studios in Downtown Dallas. The reason the station opened a studio in Northpark was so that people who were not in the audience could also see a live broadcast through the studios glass windows. Away We Go was a local game show hosted by Ron Chapman.

See also

• List of shopping malls in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex

References

External links

• NorthPark Center Official Site