Few cities in America were impacted by the rise of suburban shopping malls as significantly as Jacksonville.
The city had already built up a reputation as a shopping mecca through its decades of thriving downtown department stores. It therefore came as no surprise that, when shopping malls boomed in popularity in the 1960s, mall developers set their sights on the Bold City.
Five enclosed shopping malls debuted in Jacksonville during the ‘60s, and another three were built in the decades since. Only two are still in operation as malls, with the rest having been either redeveloped for a new purpose or demolished.
We’ve put together a brief history of each of Jacksonville’s eight indoor shopping malls, as a reminder of how the city was once among the country’s finest shopping destinations.
Construction began in the early 1980s on Grande Boulevard Mall, an upscale shopping mall development at Old Baymeadows Road and Southside Boulevard aimed at captivating the wealthy residents of nearby Deerwood. The two-story, $16 million mall opened in 1983 with upscale department chain Jacobson’s as its sole anchor tenant.
The mall was initially filled out by other high-end national brands, many of which sold items with price tags in the hundreds, if not thousands. Later, as the high-end offerings proved unsuccessful, more traditional mall brands such as The Athlete’s Foot and The Limited became commonplace. An Annie Tiques restaurant rounded out the mall’s offerings.
To add to the feeling of “exclusivity” that the mall’s development team wished to create, Grande Boulevard was marketed as an upscale destination for only the wealthiest of shoppers. Management decisions such as closing the mall at 6:00 PM on weekdays and all day on Sunday further ensured that its high-end shoppers wouldn’t have to rub elbows with the working class.
It was that same elitist flair, however, that doomed the mall from the beginning. Having severely overestimated the market for such a development in Jax, it struggled to attract shoppers and, one by one, pricy chains like Lilly Pulitzer abandoned the property.
Grande Boulevard Mall was dealt its final blow by the opening of The Avenues just down the street in 1990. A few years later, the mall’s owners sold the building – minus Jacobson’s, which stayed in business until 2002 – to FSCJ; it’s now known as FSCJ Deerwood Center, housing classrooms, a food court, and offices.
The Avenues is not going anywhere. That mall is in a better side of town and is more convenient to all areas of Jacksonville & even nearby St. John’s County to the south. Although stores began leaving in recent years, the mall is generally very healthy. The departure of Sears in late 2019 didn’t really affect the mall. Another plus is that the store occupied 120,000 square feet and was leased by Sears rather than being a 200,000 square foot store owned by Seritage Growth Properties. I will say that many of those stores, along with the ones at Regency & Orange Park, are going to stay vacant longer than the Avenues location. Simon is very good at filling vacant boxes so they won’t have a problem finding a new vibrant tenant for the space. The difference between the Avenues vs. Orange Park & Regency is that the area of Arlington isn’t very well ran considering how badly rundown Regency is, & I’m not saying that Orange Park will go under, but that mall is more for the middle class, & whereas with the Avenues, the surrounding areas are more affluent. Don’t be negative at all, I do think the Avenues will better compete with St. John’s Town Center by getting another makeover and having a Von Maur to replace the former Sears in 2022. In general, Jax’s Southside is very innovative. One thing that the Avenues & St. John’s Town Center have in common is that they’re both owned by Simon, which also owns other high quality malls. Either way, right now is a very tough time for all retailers & shopping centers, so there’s a chance that things will get better as the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic slows down.