Great Northern Mall (Ohio)

Great Northern Mall

Location	North Olmsted, Ohio, United States
Coordinates	41°25′02″N 81°54′20″W
Address	4954 Great Northern Mall, North Olmsted, OH 44070
Opening date	1976
Developer	Biskind Development Company
Management	Starwood Retail Partners
Owner	Starwood Capital Group
No. of stores and services	120
No. of anchor tenants	5
Total retail floor area	1.2 million ft²
No. of floors	1 (2 in Dick's Sporting Goods and Regal Cinemas)
Public transit access	Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority
Website	www.shoppinggreatnorthernmall.com

Great Northern Mall, is a single-level enclosed shopping mall in North Olmsted, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. Its anchor stores are Macy's, Dillard's, Sears, J. C. Penney and Dick's Sporting Goods.

History

Originally, a small outdoor shopping center was opened by Saul Biskind in 1958 on what was a field of strawberries. The plaza contained a Sears (west end), F. W. Woolworth Company (center west), a grocery store (east end), along with a small-scale J.C. Penney and other stores. A freestanding May Company Cleveland store was built to the east of the original plaza in 1964.

The enclosed mall was opened in 1976 and attached to east end of the existing May Company building. It featured new, larger J. C. Penney and Sears stores. In 1980, Hexalon Real Estate—an affiliate of what is now Unibail-Rodamco—became an investor in the mall. The 1980s saw the opening of the Plaza South attached to the original strip (now renamed the Plaza) and the 1986 addition of the award-winning South Court to the mall. Additionally, two mid-level hotels and several office facilities, such as Corporate Center and Technology Park, were built proximal to the retail facilities. These served to feed customers into the Mall and Plazas, as did the strategic location near Lorain Road, Brookpark Road, Great Northern Boulevard, and Interstate 480.

In 1991, Hexalon bought out the remaining Biskind stake in the mall and undertook a significant upgrade and remodel in 1992-1993. It hired The Edward J. DeBartolo Corporation as its management company until 2000, when Rodamco's Urban Shopping Centers assumed management. The Biskind family, which had retained the Plazas, eventually sold them to DDR Corp. in 1997.

May Company Cleveland was renamed Kaufmann's in 1993, and became Macy's in 2006. The Westfield Group acquired the shopping center in early 2002, and renamed it "Westfield Shoppingtown Great Northern." Dillard's was added in April 2003, expanding the South Court into a full-fledged new wing. Westfield dropped "Shoppingtown" from the mall's name in June 2005, around the time that a newly built 84,000 square foot Dick's Sporting Goods opened.

The original food court, which had been located between Sears and J. C. Penney, was moved adjacent to Dick's in 2011. In March 2013, construction began at site of the original food court for a 10-screen Regal Entertainment Group movie theater, three new restaurants, and extra renovations; this addition was completed by December of that year. The mall was sold to Starwood Retail Partners, a subsidiary of Starwood Capital Group, in the midst of construction.

Anchors

• Macy's (228,554 sq ft.)
• Dillard's (214,653 sq ft.)
• Sears (179,624 sq ft.)
• J. C. Penney (165,428 sq ft.)
• Dick's Sporting Goods (84,000 sq ft.)
• Regal Cinemas (35,239 sq ft.)

Junior anchors

• H&M

See also

• Westfield Group
• Starwood Capital Group
• Euclid Square Mall and Randall Park Mall - two nearby malls that opened at the same time with the former a dead mall (with no retail tenants) and latter a mall undergoing demolition

External links

• Official Great Northern Mall website