Westfield Southcenter, formerly known as Southcenter Mall, is a

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 ...

located in

Tukwila, Washington Tukwila ( ) is a suburban city in King County, Washington, United States, located immediately to the south of Seattle. The population was 21,798 at the 2020 census. Tukwila is a community of communities, with residents of many diverse origin ...

, United States. Owned by

Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield SE (previously Unibail-Rodamco SE) is a French commercial real estate company headquartered in Paris, France. Its history originates with the formation of two separate shopping centre operators, Unibail (founded in Fran ...

, it is the largest shopping center in

Washington state Washington (), officially the State of Washington, is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. Named for George Washington—the first U.S. president—the state was formed from the western part of the Washington ...

and the

Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though ...

. The mall is anchored by

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 ...

(formerly

The Bon Marché The Bon Marché, whose French name translates to "the good market" or "the good deal", was a department store chain launched in Seattle, Washington, United States, in 1890 by Edward Nordhoff. The name was influenced by Le Bon Marché, the note ...

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 ...

Nordstrom Nordstrom, Inc. () is an American luxury department store chain headquartered in Seattle, Washington, and founded by John W. Nordstrom and Carl F. Wallin in 1901. The original Wallin & Nordstrom store operated exclusively as a shoe store, and ...

, and

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 ...

(formerly

Frederick & Nelson Frederick & Nelson was a department store chain in the northwestern United States, based in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1891 as a furniture store, it later expanded to sell other types of merchandise. The company was acquired by Marshall Fiel ...

), and also features an

AMC AMC may refer to: Film and television * AMC Theatres, an American movie theater chain * AMC Networks, an American entertainment company ** AMC (TV channel) ** AMC+, streaming service ** AMC Networks International, an entertainment company *** AM ...

movie theater A movie theater (American English), cinema (British English), or cinema hall ( Indian English), also known as a movie house, picture house, the movies, the pictures, picture theater, the silver screen, the big screen, or simply theater is a ...

, which opened in 2000. The mall's Sears is one of two remaining in Washington state and among the last 28 stores.

History

Early history and construction: 1956–1968

In early 1956, three officials from Seattle's Northgate Shopping Center - James Douglas, president of Northgate Co., Wells McCurdy, Douglas' assistant, and Rex Allison, the vice president of

Allied Department Stores Allied Stores was a department store chain in the United States. It was founded in the 1930s as part of a general consolidation in the retail sector by B. E. Puckett. See also Associated Dry Goods. It was the successor to Hahn's Department Stores ...

- formed the Southcenter Corporation as a subsidiary of Allied. Their goal was to eventually build a large shopping center south of downtown Seattle that would match the success of their own Northgate and they began to search for a site, preferably of at least 100

acres The acre is a unit of land area used in the imperial and US customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one chain by one furlong (66 by 660 feet), which is exactly equal to 10 square chains, of a square mile, 4,840 square ya ...

. The site they chose was part of what was known as the Andover Tract, an area of former pasture land being developed by the

Port of Seattle The Port of Seattle is a government agency overseeing the seaport and airport of Seattle, Washington, United States. With a portfolio of properties ranging from parks and waterfront real estate, to one of the largest airports and container t ...

for industrial use. In anticipation of the developments, the entire area (947 acres; 383 ha) was annexed by the city of Tukwila in November 1957. Southcenter Corporation strategically purchased at what would eventually become the intersection of two major

freeways A controlled-access highway is a type of highway that has been designed for high-speed vehicular traffic, with all traffic flow—ingress and egress—regulated. Common English terms are freeway, motorway and expressway. Other similar terms i ...

, the Seattle-Tacoma Freeway (

I-5 Interstate 5 (I-5) is the main north–south Interstate Highway on the West Coast of the United States, running largely parallel to the Pacific coast of the contiguous U.S. from Mexico to Canada. It travels through the states of Californi ...

) and I-405. The construction schedule of the mall was dependent on the construction of the freeways. Excavation at the site began in early 1967, and construction of the $30 million shopping center began in the summer of that year.

John Graham & Company John Graham & Company, or John Graham & Associates was the name of an architectural firm, founded in 1900 in Seattle, Washington, by English-born architect John Graham (1873–1955), and maintained by his son John Graham Jr. (1908–1991). The f ...

, a Seattle firm that also designed the original Northgate and

Tacoma Mall The Tacoma Mall is the largest shopping center in Tacoma, Washington, and is owned and operated by the Simon Property Group. Anchor tenants include Dick's Sporting Goods, JCPenney (originally two levels, but added a third level in 1986), Macy's ( ...

s, was announced as the architect for the project. Even with four labor strikes slowing work down, construction was largely completed by May 1968; work on the interior continued until the day before the mall's opening. In total, 25 main contractors and 50

subcontractor A subcontractor is an individual or (in many cases) a business that signs a contract to perform part or all of the obligations of another's contract. Put simply the role of a subcontractor is to execute the job they are hired by the contractor f ...

s were involved in the construction. The concrete

terrazzo Terrazzo is a composite material, poured in place or precast, which is used for floor and wall treatments. It consists of chips of marble, quartz, granite, glass, or other suitable material, poured with a cementitious binder (for chemical bindi ...

floors of the mall, which were a last-minute addition, were said to be the largest in area (85,000 square feet) in the entire

Puget Sound region The Puget Sound region is a coastal area of the Pacific Northwest in the U.S. state of Washington, including Puget Sound, the Puget Sound lowlands, and the surrounding region roughly west of the Cascade Range and east of the Olympic Mountains. ...

. 500 cubic yards of sand, 3,000 100-pound sacks of gray cement, 3,000 100-pound (45 kg) sacks of white

cement A cement is a binder, a chemical substance used for construction that sets, hardens, and adheres to other materials to bind them together. Cement is seldom used on its own, but rather to bind sand and gravel ( aggregate) together. Cement mix ...

and 5,000 100-pound (45 kg) sacks of brown marble chips were required to make the cement-like mixture for the floors. The floors were also fitted with of

zinc Zinc is a chemical element with the symbol Zn and atomic number 30. Zinc is a slightly brittle metal at room temperature and has a shiny-greyish appearance when oxidation is removed. It is the first element in group 12 (IIB) of the periodi ...

divider strips. The grand opening was held on July 31, 1968, at 11 a.m., with then-governor Dan Evans as the key speaker. At with 92 stores and 3,600 employees, it was the largest shopping mall in the region."Workers Rush to Ready Giant Southcenter for Grand Opening" ''Seattle Times'' 21 Jul. 1968. P.4 C

Westfield: since 2002

In early 2002, the mall was purchased by the

Westfield Group Westfield Group was an Australian shopping centre company that existed from 1960 to 2014, when it split into two independent companies: Scentre Group, which owns and operates the Australian and New Zealand Westfield shopping centre portfolio; ...

and renamed "Westfield Southcenter". On May 11, 2006, Westfield broke ground on a $240 million expansion, which increased its area by . On July 22, 2010, Seafood City opened in the former

Mervyn's 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, ...

space, and in 2014

The Container Store The Container Store Group, Inc. is an American specialty retail chain company that operates The Container Store, which offers storage and organization products, and custom closets. The company has made ''Fortunes list of " 100 Best Companie ...

opened in the former

Borders Books 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 in ...

space. That same year the Westfield Group split its assets, with malls in North America and Europe being moved into the

Westfield Corporation Westfield Corporation was an Australian commercial real estate company and operator of shopping centres. It was founded with the spin-off of the Westfield Group in 2014, where assets in Australia and New Zealand formed the Scentre Group and ...

. In 2015, it was announced that the

Rainforest Cafe Rainforest Cafe is a jungle-themed restaurant chain owned by Landry's, Inc., of Houston. It was founded by Steven Schussler. The first location opened in the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, on February 3, 1994. By 1997, the chain co ...

would close in January 2016. It was replaced by a

Chinese restaurant A Chinese restaurant is an establishment that serves a Chinese cuisine. Most of them are in the Cantonese cuisine, Cantonese style, due to the history of the Overseas Chinese, Chinese diaspora and adapted to local taste preferences, as in t ...

Din Tai Fung Din Tai Fung (; Pha̍k-fa-sṳ: Tín-thai-fûng) is a Taiwanese restaurant chain. Outside Taiwan, Din Tai Fung also has branches in Australia, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, ...

, which opened in April 2017. In December 2017,

was purchased by the European shopping center giant Unibail-Rodamco, which appended its name to

. Its properties in North America and Europe were unified under the Westfield brand.

References

External links

Official websiteMall is the area's main attraction
''

Seattle Post-Intelligencer The ''Seattle Post-Intelligencer'' (popularly known as the ''Seattle P-I'', the ''Post-Intelligencer'', or simply the ''P-I'') is an online newspaper and former print newspaper based in Seattle, Washington, United States. The newspaper was foun ...

''
New Official Westfield Southcenter website with details of mall expansion
{{WestfieldUnitedStates Shopping malls in King County, Washington

Southcenter Westfield Southcenter, formerly known as Southcenter Mall, is a shopping mall located in Tukwila, Washington, United States. Owned by Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, it is the largest shopping center in Washington state and the Pacific Northwest. The ...

Shopping malls established in 1968 1968 establishments in Washington (state)