La Gran Plaza de Fort Worth is a Hispanic-themed

shopping mall A shopping mall (or simply mall) is a North American term for a large indoor shopping center, usually anchored by department stores. The term "mall" originally meant a pedestrian promenade with shops along it (that is, the term was used to refe ...

Fort Worth, Texas Fort Worth is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Texas and the 13th-largest city in the United States. It is the county seat of Tarrant County, covering nearly into four other counties: Denton, Johnson, Parker, and Wise. Accord ...

. Opened in 1962 as Seminary South and later known as Fort Worth Town Center, it was reinvented as a center catering to largely Hispanic clientele after losing most of its major stores. Major tenants include Burlington,

Ross Dress for Less Ross Stores, Inc., operating under the brand name Ross Dress for Less, is an American chain of discount department stores headquartered in Dublin, California. It is the largest off-price retailer in the U.S.; as of 2018, Ross operates 1,483 sto ...

, Bealls Clearance Center, and El Mercado.

History

The center opened for business on March 14, 1962 as Seminary South Shopping Center. It was the first shopping mall built by

Homart Development Company Homart Development Company, a Chicago-based subsidiary of Sears, was one of the largest builders of shopping centers and malls in the United States from 1959 to 1995. Company history As retail development in the United States shifted away from d ...

, a former division of

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 ...

department stores through which they built shopping malls. Its original tenants included Sears,

G. C. Murphy G.C. Murphy was a chain of five and dime or variety stores in the United States from 1906 to 2002. They also operated Murphy's Mart (full scale discount stores), Bargain World (closeout merchandise), Terry & Ferris and Bruners (junior department ...

, and Stripling's department store. Other major tenants included Buddies supermarket (later Winn Dixie), Finger Furniture, and a seven-story office tower.

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 ...

was added in 1964, and Dillard's joined in 1977. On 23 December 1974, the car of the three girls that became known as the Fort Worth Missing Trio was found in the Sears upper-level parking lot. Texas Centers bought the building from Homart in 1985 and announced renovation plans, including enclosure of the formerly open-air concourses. The Stripling's store was later renamed Stripling & Cox before closing in 1989. Around this point, the mall began losing traffic and tenants to other centers in the area, such as

Ridgmar Mall Ridgmar Mall is an enclosed shopping mall in Fort Worth, Texas. It opened in 1976 at 1888 Green Oaks Road and Interstate 30. It is owned by GK Development, Inc. It includes four anchor stores – Dillard's, Dillard's Clearance Center, JCPenney, R ...

and

Hulen Mall Hulen Mall is a diverse-scale shopping mall located in southwest Fort Worth, Texas, United States. Located at the southwest corner of Interstate 20 and Hulen Street, it is in the southwest side of the DFW Metroplex. The mall is anchored by two maj ...

. Despite the loss of stores, a movie theater and food court were added, the latter replacing G. C. Murphy. As a result of declining traffic, JCPenney closed in 1997, followed by Sears and Dillard's, leaving the mall without an anchor store. In 2004, Legaspi bought the property, which at the time had only a 10 percent occupancy rate. The new owners reinvented the property to cater to a largely Hispanic clientele, including the addition of El Mercado, a market for local vendors, in the former Dillard's space. Burlington and

replaced the Sears space.

References

{{Dallas malls Shopping malls in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex Shopping malls established in 1962 1962 establishments in Texas