Saint Louis Galleria

The Saint Louis Galleria (or St. Louis Galleria) is a shopping mall in the St. Louis suburb of Richmond Heights. The mall is owned and operated by General Growth Properties.

History

Originally the site of the Westroads Shopping Center anchored by Stix Baer & Fuller, the property was sold in 1984 to Hycel Properties, which demolished most of the mall (but not the Stix or North Wing which included Walgreens (demolished & now soon to close Mark Shale store) and built the Saint Louis Galleria. Dillard's, which had acquired the old Stix chain, expanded the existing location at the same time, while retailer Mark Shale opened a major store.

In 1991, the building was expanded south of the Atrium. The Clayton Famous Barr store (now Macy's) moved to the Galleria and luxury department store Lord & Taylor opened on the south end. The addition also included an emergency electric generator that can supply limited lighting and monitoring functions (but not full operations) during a power failure. The mall receives external electric service from four points. It adapted the enclosed delivery corridor concept (but very little of the actual structure) from the Westroads design. Trucks enter on the south end and exit on the north end. The original loading dock for the Stix store (which remains in operation) is very similar in design to the loading dock at River Roads Mall, another Stix-developed shopping mall.

In 2006, two incidents between teenagers led officials on April 20, 2007, to require anyone under 16 to be accompanied by someone at least 21 years old on Fridays and Saturdays after 3 p.m.^[3][4]

Around the same time, MetroLink had opened up the Richmond Heights station just a short distance away from the mall. The two incidents along with many shoplifting and brawling cases were constantly being blamed on MetroLink, simply due to the spike in the number of such cases at the mall in August 2006, compared to the previous month. This brought fear into St. Louisians about their safety in the mall, and caused a decline in Galleria patronage. Although the Mall's new policies and security strategies have been able to deter much of criminal activity, many St. Louis area residents refuse to go to the Galleria because of the close proximity to the MetroLink system.^[5][6]

In 2006, Nordstrom in a deal with Macy's planned to open a store at the mall after they were done selling the Lord & Taylor brand to Hudson's Bay. In December 2008, Nordstrom said it would delay opening of the store until 2011 due to the local economy.^[1]

Recession hit Galleria sales hard in 2008. Jimmy'z and Mark Shale closed their Galleria outlets as a result of the recession. Richmond Heights, which gets half its revenue from sales taxes and for which the Galleria is the largest taxpayer,^[7] saw sales-tax receipts drop from $10.1 million in fiscal 2007 to $9.1 million in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2008.^[8]

On April 16, 2009, General Growth Properties and 158 of its properties filed for the largest real estate bankruptcy in U.S. history.^[9]

Anchor stores

• Dillard's^{[10] [11]}(opened 1955 as Stix, Baer, and Fuller. Became Dillard's in 1984, 330,000 ft²)
• Macy's^[10] (opened 1991 as Famous-Barr, became Macy's 2006, 265,000 ft²)
• Nordstrom (opened September 2011, on site of demolished Lord & Taylor; 143,000 sq. ft)

References

• A Galleria advertising insert that ran in the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch, Sept. 13, 1987.

External links

• Saint Louis Galleria
• Saint Louis Galleria 6 Movie Theatre