Citadel Mall is a regional shopping mall located in Charleston, South Carolina, United States. It opened on July 29, 1981 and is located at the intersection of Sam Rittenberg Boulevard (SC Hwy. 7) and I-526. The mall features more than 100 stores. On September 1, 2013 the mall went into foreclosure after then owner CBL & Associates Properties defaulted on mortgage payments and it was purchased at auction by the lender in January 2014. After the auction, the mall was placed under the ownership of a holding company formed by the lender, 2070 Sam Rittenberg Boulevard Holdings LLC and as of January 2017 was under contract to be sold to an undisclosed buyer. The anchor stores are

Target Target may refer to: Physical items * Shooting target, used in marksmanship training and various shooting sports ** Bullseye (target), the goal one for which one aims in many of these sports ** Aiming point, in field artillery, f ...

Belk Belk, Inc. is an American department store chain founded in 1888 by William Henry Belk in Monroe, North Carolina, with nearly 300 locations in 16 states. Belk stores and Belk.com offer apparel, shoes, accessories, cosmetics, home furnishings, a ...

, Dillard's, Mixed Bag Productions, and

Medical University of South Carolina The Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) is a public medical school in South Carolina. It opened in 1824 in Charleston as a small private college aimed at training physicians and has since established hospitals and medical facilities ac ...

History

The mall opened in 1981 as a project of national mall developer Jacobs, Visconsi & Jacobs of Cleveland, Ohio. Citadel Mall is located at the intersection of Sam Rittenberg Boulevard (S.C. Highway 7) and Savannah Highway ( U.S. Highway 17) at the junction of

Interstate 526 Interstate 526 (I-526) is a auxiliary route of I-26, providing a partial beltway around Charleston, South Carolina, in the United States. The route serves several purposes, firstly, as a bypass for through traffic on U.S. Route 17 ( ...

in the heavily commercialized

West Ashley West Ashley, or more formally, west of the Ashley, is one of the six distinct areas of the city proper of Charleston, South Carolina. As of July 2022, its estimated population was 83,996. Its name is derived from the fact that the land is west of ...

suburb of Charleston, South Carolina. At the time of its opening, Citadel Mall was anchored by

Sears Sears, Roebuck and Co. ( ), commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began a ...

which relocated from a free-standing location in Downtown Charleston at Calhoun and St. Philip Streets.

, which shuttered a 1950s store in Pinehaven Shopping Center in

North Charleston North Charleston is the third-largest city in the state of South Carolina.City Planning Department (2008-07)City of North Charleston boundary map. City of North Charleston. Retrieved January 21, 2011. On June 12, 1972, the city of North Charlest ...

relocated to the mall, and Thalhimer's, an upscale Richmond, Virginia-based department store chain new to

South Carolina )'' Animis opibusque parati'' ( for, , Latin, Prepared in mind and resources, links=no) , anthem = " Carolina";" South Carolina On My Mind" , Former = Province of South Carolina , seat = Columbia , LargestCity = Charleston , LargestMetro = ...

owned by

Carter Hawley Hale Stores Broadway Stores, Inc., was an American retailer based in Southern California. Known through its history as Carter Hawley Hale Stores and Broadway Hale Stores over time, it acquired other retail store chains in regions outside its California home b ...

. Jacobs, Visconsi & Jacobs later became The Richard E. Jacobs Group in the 1990s. The first major change at the mall occurred in 1992 when it was announced that Thalhimer's, now owned by the May Department Store Company would be folded into the

Hecht's Hecht's, also known as Hecht Brothers, Hecht Bros. and the Hecht Company, was a large chain of department stores that operated mainly in the mid-Atlantic and southern region of the United States. The firm originated in Baltimore, Maryland. By 20 ...

Department Store chain and the Charleston location would be sold to Dillard's. Dillard's operated in the space for two years before moving to a newly constructed larger building at the mall in 1994. Dillard's sold the former Thalhimer's building to

JCPenney Penney OpCo LLC, doing business as JCPenney and often abbreviated JCP, is a midscale American department store chain operating 667 stores across 49 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. Departments inside JCPenney stores include Mens, Womens, Boys, Gir ...

, which remodeled the space and operated there until 2001 when it was sold to

and torn down, replaced by a newly constructed one-story building for Target.

relocated its original mall store into a newly constructed larger two-story building next to Dillard's, selling its old building to Parisian in 2000. When Belk bought the Parisian chain in 2006 from

Saks Incorporated Saks, Inc. (originally Proffitt's, Inc.) was an American holding company founded in 1919. Before acquisition by the Canadian-founded Hudson's Bay Company in 2013, it held ownership of department store chains including New York City-based Saks Fi ...

and folded the Parisian chain into Belk, the Parisian store at Citadel Mall was closed since Belk already operated a location at the mall. The building was sold to JCPenney, who returned to the mall in 2007. The Richard E. Jacobs Group added a Food Court and completely remodeled the mall's interior in the early 2000s. Shortly thereafter, Jacobs divested the majority of its mall portfolio and sold Citadel Mall to

CBL & Associates Properties CBL Properties (previously CBL & Associates, Inc., then CBL & Associates Properties, Inc.) is an American real estate investment trust that invests in shopping centers, primarily in the Southeastern and Midwestern United States. The company is ...

. CBL added a sixth anchor store to the mix in 2005 - Dick's Sporting Goods on an outparcel next to the mall's freestanding six screen

AMC Theatres AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. (d/b/a AMC Theatres, originally an abbreviation for American Multi-Cinema; often referred to simply as AMC and known in some countries as AMC Cinemas or AMC Multi-Cinemas) is an American movie theater chain fou ...

. On April 8, 2008,

announced that it was closing its Citadel Mall Cinema 6 after the final showing on Sunday, April 13, 2008. AMC also announced plans to close its Northwoods Mall Cinema 8 on the same date. The cinema was originally built as a part of the General Cinemas chain which later was sold to AMC Theatres. General Cinemas had announced plans to demolish and replace the Citadel Mall Cinema 6 with a huge new multiplex featuring stadium seating and Dolby surround sound to be built on a vacant parcel of land behind the existing cinemas. With the sale to AMC these plans never materialized. On April 12, 2008 it was announced that the property was acquired by Southeast Cinema Entertainment of

Charlotte, North Carolina Charlotte ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Located in the Piedmont region, it is the county seat of Mecklenburg County. The population was 874,579 at the 2020 census, making Charlotte the 16th-most populo ...

. It was reopened temporarily until September 2008 when the current cinema building was demolished. It was replaced by a state of the art sixteen screen megaplex known as Citadel Mall IMAX Stadium 16 with several screens dedicated to art films and featuring stadium-style seating. The new IMAX megaplex opened October 2, 2009. The mall was prominently featured in an episode of The Food Network's popular program "Food Court Wars" hosted by famed chef Tyler Florence that was taped at the mall in June 2013. The show pitted two couples against one another for the chance to win a lease of a vacant food court space at the mall for a year. On September 10, 2013

The Post & Courier ''The Post and Courier'' is the main daily newspaper in Charleston, South Carolina. It traces its ancestry to three newspapers, the ''Charleston Courier'', founded in 1803, the ''Charleston Daily News'', founded 1865, and ''The Evening Post'', f ...

reported that US Bank National Association filed foreclosure proceedings against Citadel Mall's owners Citadel Mall CMBS LLC, a subsidiary of CBL & Associates Properties in Charleston County Court and had plunged the mall into receivership.

Spinoso Real Estate Group Spinoso is a town and ''comune'' in the province of Potenza, in the Southern Italian region of Basilicata it, Lucano (man) it, Lucana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demograph ...

of North Syracuse, New York was retained to manage the mall by the court appointed receiver and continued managing the mall for the holding company that purchased the mall at auction. Spinoso Real Estate Group aggressively marketed the mall and successfully attracted new tenants during the period in which the mall was under bank ownership. Citadel Mall is seen as a highly attractive property due to its central location and visibility at the convergence of two major highways and an interstate and the fact that it has 6 successful anchor tenants and a new state of the art IMAX cinema complex. It was announced on February 24, 2017 that the mall was purchased for $17 million by TMP SRE 1, LLC, a limited-liability company of local business persons led by managing partner

Richard C. Davis Richard C. Davis (born August 23, 1963) is the founder, president and CEO of Trademark Properties, which he founded in 1990, in Charleston, South Carolina, U.S.A. He and his company specialize in Real Estate. Flip This House Richard C. Davis ga ...

who is noted for developing and starring in the first season of A&E's "Flip This House" reality television series. The new owners have indicated that they intend to upgrade the mall's tenant mix to better suit the area while also adding entertainment and mixed-use elements including the construction of a multi-story travel sports facility attached to the mall. Former management company Spinoso Real Estate Group has been replaced by the new ownership and the property is now managed by JLL - Jones Lang LaSalle. On March 17, 2017, JCPenney announced that its store would be closing as part of a plan to close 138 stores nationwide. The store closed on July 31, 2017. The JCPenney building was purchased by a subsidiary of the mall's new owners for $5.2 million and has been leased to the

for a 20-year lease. It will undergo a $32.9 million renovation and conversion into a MUSC outpatient medical facility to include a musculoskeletal service line, ambulatory surgery center, imaging, patient services and support. On May 3, 2018, Sears announced that it would also be closing in August 2018 as part of a plan to close 42 stores nationwide. Within days of the news of the closure, it was subsequently announced that the mall's owners had acquired the Sears property for $7.55 million. They stated that the acquisition of the Sears parcel was the final piece of a three-step process to transform the mall "into something more grand and consistent with the West Ashley revitalization plan." As a part of the planned upgrades and renovations Citadel Mall was also to be renamed EPIC Center. Since 2019, HBO leases the 132,000-square-foot Sears store for principal photography for its television series

The Righteous Gemstones ''The Righteous Gemstones'' is an American television series created by Danny McBride that premiered on August 18, 2019, on HBO. The series follows a famous and dysfunctional family of televangelists. It stars McBride, John Goodman, Edi Patterso ...

. On January 6, 2023 it was reported that the mall was acquired by real estate investors Singerman Real Estate of Chicago, Illinois for an undisclosed sum. Future plans have not as yet been announced and it is unknown if the new owners intend to proceed with the planned renaming and redevelopment proposed by its former owners.

Anchors

() * Dick's Sporting Goods () * Dillard's () * MUSC Health West Ashley Medical Pavilion (Medical University of South Carolina) () *Mixed Bag Productions () ''(former Sears building-now HBO television production facility)'' *

()

References

External links

Citadel Mall's websiteJLL-Jones Lang LaSalle - Citadel Mall's management companySingerman Real Estate - Citadel Mall's owners
{{Shopping Malls in South Carolina , state=collapsed Shopping malls in South Carolina Shopping malls established in 1981 Buildings and structures in Charleston, South Carolina Tourist attractions in Charleston, South Carolina JLL (company) 1981 establishments in South Carolina