Southland Center (also known as Southland Mall) is an

enclosed 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 ref ...

located at 23000 Eureka Road in

Taylor, Michigan Taylor is a city in Wayne County, Michigan, Wayne County in the U.S. state of Michigan. Its population was 63,409 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Taylor is the fifth most-populated city in Wayne County and the 17th List of municipa ...

Downriver Downriver is the unofficial name for a collection of 18 cities and townships in Wayne County, Michigan, south of Detroit, along the western shore of the Detroit River. The place is sometimes referred to as South Detroit. Etymology The name ...

community located southwest of

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at th ...

), exactly halfway between U.S. Highway 24 (Telegraph Road) and the

Interstate 75 Interstate 75 (I-75) is a major north–south Interstate Highway in the Great Lakes and Southeastern regions of the United States. As with most Interstates that end in 5, it is a major cross-country, north–south route, traveling from S ...

freeway. The anchor stores are

Cinemark Theatres Cinemark Holdings, Inc. (stylized as CineMark from 1998 to 2022 and CINEMARK since 2022) is an American movie theater chain that started operations in 1984 and since then it has operated theaters with hundreds of locations throughout the America ...

Forever 21 Forever 21 is a multinational fast fashion retailer headquartered in Los Angeles, California, United States. Originally founded as the store Fashion 21 in Highland Park, Los Angeles in 1984,Forever 21History & Facts, n.d. Retrieved 27 April 2014 ...

Best Buy Best Buy Co. Inc. is an American multinational consumer electronics retailer headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota. Originally founded by Richard M. Schulze and James Wheeler in 1966 as an audio specialty store called Sound of Music, it was rebra ...

Shoe Carnival Shoe Carnival Inc. is an American retailer of family footwear. The company operates 377 stores throughout the midwest, south, and southeast regions. It was founded by David Russell in 1978 and is headquartered in Evansville, Indiana. The company ...

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 ...

, and

Macy's Macy's (originally R. H. Macy & Co.) is an American chain of high-end department stores founded in 1858 by Rowland Hussey Macy. It became a division of the Cincinnati-based Federated Department Stores in 1994, through which it is affiliated wi ...

. Other major stores include H&M and

Ulta Beauty Ulta Beauty, Inc., formerly known as Ulta Salon, Cosmetics & Fragrance Inc. and before 2000 as Ulta3, is an American chain of beauty stores headquartered in Bolingbrook, Illinois. Ulta Beauty carries both high-end and low-end cosmetics, fragran ...

. It is the newest of the Detroit area's four "land" malls ( Northland, Southland, Eastland,

Westland Westland or Westlands may refer to: Places *Westlands, an affluent neighbourhood in the city of Nairobi, Kenya * Westlands, Staffordshire, a suburban area and ward in Newcastle-under-Lyme *Westland, a peninsula of the Shetland Mainland near Vaila ...

). Southland Center opened on July 20, 1970. It is owned and managed by

Brookfield Properties Brookfield Properties is a North American subsidiary of commercial real estate company Brookfield Property Partners, which itself is a subsidiary of alternative asset management company Brookfield Asset Management. It is responsible for the pro ...

, one of the largest mall owners in the United States.

History

Southland Center was designed by

Victor Gruen Victor David Gruen, born Viktor David Grünbaum
retrieved 25 February 2012 (July 18, 1903 – February 1 ...

Associates and Louis G. Redstone Associates, and the newly formed Dayton-Hudson Corporation (a merger of

Dayton's Dayton's was an American department store chain founded in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1902 by George Draper Dayton. It operated several local high end department stores throughout Minnesota and the Upper Midwest for almost 100 years. Although it ...

Minneapolis Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origins ...

and

Hudson's The J. L. Hudson Company (commonly known simply as Hudson's) was an upscale retail department store chain based in Detroit, Michigan. Hudson's flagship store, on Woodward Avenue in Downtown Detroit (demolished October 24, 1998), was the tallest d ...

) developed the mall. When opened in 1970, Southland Mall was originally anchored by a three-level;

at the center of the mall and junior-anchored by a

Woolworth's Woolworth, Woolworth's, or Woolworths may refer to: Businesses * F. W. Woolworth Company, the original US-based chain of "five and dime" (5¢ and 10¢) stores * Woolworths Group (United Kingdom), former operator of the Woolworths chain of shops ...

dime store off the center court and a

Kroger The Kroger Company, or simply Kroger, is an American retail company that operates (either directly or through its subsidiaries) supermarkets and multi-department stores throughout the United States. Founded by Bernard Kroger in 1883 in Cincin ...

supermarket on the eastern side. A two-screen movie theater, located off the west court, opened just weeks after the rest of the mall. Kroger built a larger facility across Eureka Road in the mid-1970s, with the former store gutted and divided into several smaller stores, attached to a new wing ending in a new two-level;

store in 1976. In 1986, the theater, by then a four-screen venue, was purchased by

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 ...

. In 1988, a small addition was built onto the western side, including a

Mervyns Mervyn's was an American middle-scale department store chain based in Hayward, California, and founded by Mervin G. Morris (1920–2021). It carried national brands of clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, jewelry, beauty products, electronics, ...

store that opened on August 12 of that year, and in October,

The Rouse Company The Rouse Company, founded by Hunter Moss and James W. Rouse in 1939, was a publicly held shopping mall and community developer from 1956 until 2004, when General Growth Properties (GGP) purchased the company. Beginnings - Moss-Rouse Company T ...

acquired the mall from its previous owners. First announced in 1991, a

food court A food court (in Asia-Pacific also called food hall or hawker centre) is generally an indoor plaza or common area within a facility that is contiguous with the counters of multiple food vendors and provides a common area for self-serve dinner. I ...

called ''Picnic In The Garden'' broke ground on February 13, 1992 and opened on November 19, 1992, featuring a large triangular-shaped skylight, along with an expansion to

Champs Sports Champs Sports is an American sports retail store, it operates as a subsidiary of Foot Locker. Products sold at Champs Sports include apparel, equipment, footwear, and accessories. As of June 2019, there were 540 store locations found throughout ...

' store and a new Lerner New York store. AMC's four-screen theater closed in January 1999 and was replaced with a

Borders Books & Music Borders Group, Inc. (former NYSE ticker symbol BGP) was an American multinational book and music retailer based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. In its final year, the company employed about 19,500 people throughout the U.S., primarily i ...

a year later. Hudson's was renamed

Marshall Field's Marshall Field & Company (commonly known as Marshall Field's) was an upscale department store in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in the 19th century, it grew to become a large chain before Macy's, Inc acquired it in 2005. Its eponymous founder, Mar ...

in 2001 and

in 2006. Also in 2006, Mervyns exited Michigan and vacated its anchor in the mall (that space was subsequently demolished in 2015) and the food court, which had lost all of its tenants in late 2005, was demolished (except for the skylight) and rebuilt into a Best Buy store. Later, in 2011, the Borders store shut down when that chain became defunct. Rouse Properties was spun off from General Growth Properties in January 2012. The company then added several new tenants; including

rue21 New rue21, LLC (rue21) is an American specialty retailer of women's & men's casual apparel and accessories headquartered in the Pittsburgh suburb of Warrendale, Pennsylvania. Its clothes are designed to appeal to people who desire, wish, or feel ...

, Torrid and

Taco Bell Taco Bell is an American-based chain of fast food restaurants founded in 1962 by Glen Bell (1923–2010) in Downey, California. Taco Bell is a subsidiary of Yum! Brands, Inc. The restaurants serve a variety of Mexican-inspired foods, includi ...

, to Southland Center, in addition, several existing tenants also renovated their stores. Forever 21 moved from an existing store in the mall to the former Borders space in spring 2013. Then, later in 2013, several smaller store spaces near JCPenney were demolished and replaced by a new Shoe Carnival store (which relocated from a strip development across Eureka Road). On July 2, 2014, Rouse Properties announced that the vacant-for-eight-years Mervyn's space would be replaced by a 12-screen, all-digital, Cinemark multiplex theater (which ultimately opened in April 2016 after several opening date changes), accompanied by several outdoor sit-down restaurants, including the first

Grimaldi's Pizzeria Grimaldi's Pizzeria is an American pizzeria chain from the New York City area with several restaurants throughout the United States. Its most famous restaurant is under the Brooklyn Bridge in Brooklyn at 1 Front Street, next door to its original ...

in Michigan (which opened in 2017 and barely lasted over a year before closing on July 19, 2018). This announcement came just one day after an announcement by

MJR Theatres MJR Digital Cinemas (formerly ''MJR Theatres'') is a movie theater chain with 10 theaters in the Metro Detroit area, the company is a subsidiary of the Belgium Kinepolis Group. History MJR Theatres was created in 1970 by Mike Mihalich with the ...

that they would be reopening the former AMC Star Taylor 10 multiplex theater across Eureka Road by the 2014 Christmas season, however, that plan never materialized and that building remains abandoned. In addition, in the late summer of 2014, a complete renovation of the mall began. This project added new flooring and lighting, removed the fountain and replaced it with seating and electronic-device chargers and added several more tenants including Pink, Francesca's and

Zumiez Zumiez Inc. () is an American multinational specialty clothing store founded by Thomas Campion and Gary Haakenson in 1978, and publicly traded since 2005. The company is a specialty retailer of apparel, footwear, accessories and hardgoods for y ...

. This project was completed in the summer of 2015. Ulta opened a location in the mall along the corridor between Macy's and Best Buy on August 29, 2014. H&M opened on October 1, 2015, requiring the demolition of a total of ten smaller storefronts stretching from the west court into the Cinemark wing, necessitating the relocation of the Taco Bell restaurant across the corridor. As of September 2018, a portion of the third floor of the Macy's store is now a Macy's Backstage outlet store. In 2022, Brookfield defaulted on the mall's $78.5 million loan that was due for payment in July of that year, becoming the third Metro Detroit mall to face financial issues and/or defaults in the wake of the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

, following

Fairlane Town Center Fairlane Town Center is a super-regional shopping mall in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, Michigan. The mall is adjacent to The Henry Hotel, The Fairlane Club, the University of Michigan–Dearborn, Henry Ford Community College, The Henry Ford, ...

and

The Mall at Partridge Creek The Mall at Partridge Creek is an open-air shopping mall in Clinton Township, a suburb of Detroit, Michigan, United States. Under construction since 2005, the mall opened to the public on October 18, 2007, along with Parisian, which was the mal ...

References

External links

Southland Center homepage
{{Brookfield Properties Brookfield Properties Shopping malls in Wayne County, Michigan Shopping malls established in 1970 1970 establishments in Michigan Victor Gruen buildings Taylor, Michigan