Jacksonville's Case Study

Jacksonville's Many Malls

A case study of urban retail history

If you have driven up to Jacksonville from St. Augustine, like I have for years, you may have done so to shop in the Avenues Mall. That was the first mall that I would discover in the fall of 2005 when I was new to the area. Around that same time, I ventured into the St. Johns Town Center. And for a few years, I would make regular visits there with my college friends. I would also think that they were the only two, except for one struggling older mall in a not-so-safe part of town north of there called the Regency Square Mall. A few years later, I learned from a friend that there was another mall around the same size of the Avenues but on the other side of the river. My final year of college, I visited the Jacksonville Landing for the first time. I thought of the Landing as more of a nightlife hot spot until I learned that it was often thought of as a mall. That makes five. That had to be all, right?

Doing some research online one day not even a year ago, I found out something that some long-time residents of Jacksonville know that I did not. Throughout the course of history, starting with the early 1960's, Jacksonville has been home to five other malls. 

A red dot indicates a lively, busy mall open today for shopping.
A purple dot indicates a mall that is open but it is struggling against the economy.
A blue dot indicates a structure that was a mall in decades past, but didn't survive as a mall.

Gateway Center, Normandy Mall, Philips Mall, Grande Boulevard Mall and Roosevelt Square Mall all have something major in common: they no longer exist. Their time to shine was mostly in the 1960's and some in the 1970's. The effect of the economy and the way that Jacksonville shifted over the years lead to their demise as malls, though it did not lead to their destruction. Each of these structures had the good fortune of being gentrified into something new.

• Gateway Center is now a Publix plaza with some other stores.
• Normandy Mall is now owned by a large church, but houses some shops.
• Philips Mall is now an office park.
• Grande Boulevard Mall is the main campus to a community college.
• Roosevelt Square Mall is still used for shopping, but it is a large open-air plaza with stores like Stein Mart and Publix.

All of these facilities are in the more northern and western parts of Jacksonville- the parts of town that were bright and shiny epitomes of middle class urban and suburban family life in decades past.

This image found at the Jacksonville Public Library, 

and is owned by The Florida Times-Union

The purple dots represent Regency Square Mall and the Jacksonville Landing.
Though they are still open for shopping, they are not doing as well as the other malls.
The Regency Square Mall's glory days were from its opening in 1967 and on through into the 1990's. Now, over half of the Regency Square Mall is vacated. The property has also had issues for several years with mold, which could be smelled in some of the stores. Regency square was in a middle class family neighborhood when it opened, but the central-Jacksonville subdivision, known as "Argyle" has gone downhill over the years. It is not the safe part of town anymore.
The Landing is a nightlife hotspot with its restaurants and clubs, but the "mall" part of it is also nearly half dead. Only a few stores remain open for business where there is room for many more. If you were to observe its surroundings, which is the downtown portion of Jacksonville, you would see that most of the city is in the same shape: partially abandoned and just now going through some sort of revival. The landing was opened in 1987 and was at its best in the 1990's.

The Avenues Mall, the Orange Park Mall and the St. Johns Town Center are represented by red dots. They are alive and buzzing. Of the three, Orange Park is the oldest. Opened in the 1970's, it has been chugging along ever since. Orange Park is a family-oriented subdivision of Jacksonville. The Avenues was opened in 1990, and has also been withstanding economic storms. It is planted firmly in Southside, which is still a fairly nice family area as well as home to many office parks. The St. Johns Town Center is newest, built in the early 2000's. It is a massive outdoor shopping mall with upscale stores taking up a large portion of it. It sits near University of North Florida, as well as some brand-new higher-class living suburbs and a stone's throw from J. Turner Butler Blvd, which takes you straight to Ponte Vedra, a high class beach and golf town.

From the status of the malls and their surrounding areas, compared to the history, it is clear to see that over time, the most "family friendly" and "higher class" parts of Jacksonville that are home to people who enjoy a good shopping mall have shifted from north and west of downtown and the St Johns River to more South and East, moving toward the ocean and the St Johns County line. The Avenues, opened in 1990, sits on the southern border of Jacksonville, at the intersection of Philips Highway and Southside Boulevard. Boasting a reasonably large collection of top-tier stores, like Coach and Louis Vuitton, is the St. John's Town Center. The large, sprawling open air shopping mall resides near the University of North Florida and can easily be accessed from a highway called J. Turner Butler (202) which is a straight shot over to higher income areas Ponte Vedra and Nocatee. Just over the St. Johns River, off of Blanding Boulevard is epitome of the "average middle class shopping experience" Orange Park Mall, serving all the predominantly middle class shoppers of varying ethnicities who live west of the river. Though Roosevelt and Normandy malls also sit on that side of the river, and still hold some stores and shops, Orange Park Mall is the only true (and behemoth sized) mall for that entire side of the city.

The one exception to this rule of economic shift for Jacksonville was the Grande Boulevard Mall. It was small but it was stocked with high-tiered shops that the middle class community could not afford at that time. Its life as a mall was incredibly short. Its life as a college has had much more longevity.
Those types of stores now reside in the St. Johns Town Center, which was opened nearly 20 years after the death of Grande Boulevard. Town Center is able to support those stores.
The other parts of town that were home to the malls of the past are now mostly either home to industrial facilities or lower income neighborhoods.

Most of the information in this case study has been taken from Metro Jacksonville's history page, where a forum thread was posted in 2008. My blog offers some more current information. 
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2008-oct-the-malling-of-jacksonville/page/

Gentrified and re-purposed-

Gateway Shopping Center
Opened: 1959, off Normandy Blvd, as an open-air shopping center.
Enclosed in 1967 with two department store anchors and over 30 stores.
Failed in the 1980's and early 1990's as popular shopping mall,
but remains today as a sort of offbeat mall with a Publix across the street.
It sits in a lower income area.

Metro Square
Opened: 1960. Its name was "Philips Mall" because it was on Philips Highway. It became an outlet mall in the 1980's. Now it is a business park and houses a Wells Fargo office, Baptist Health, an ice rink and more.

Grande Boulevard Mall
Opened: 1983 on the corner of Old Baymeadows and Southside Blvd. It was intended to be small but very upscale. It housed one anchor and 68 high-end stores. It was too much for the incomes of the residents and within three years it was already suffering. It was bought by FCCJ in 1994 and renovated. Now it has been renamed Florida State College, Deerwood Center.

Roosevelt Square

Opened: 1961 as an open-air shopping experience. Enclosed in 1968. Shifts and changes in the economy resulted in it going under new ownership in the late 1990's, later reaching its conversion back to an open-air shopping center again. The large strip mall is home to Publix and Stein mart as well as many small stores and restaurants. Free standing at the entrance is Belk. Unlike the popular trend of tearing down old structures to build new shopping centers, Jacksonville made good on this vintage property. This means that Belk is situated in the oldest May-Cohen's building still in existence.   

 Normandy Mall
opened: 1963. It succeeded as a mall for over two decades until Montgomery Wards, one of its only two anchors, closed down. Other closures resulted in its complete death in the 1990's, but just after the new millennium the mall saw a revival, in more than one sense of the word. Potter's House bought one of the anchor spaces as a Christian Fellowship hall and later this brought new life to the property. Now, much like the Gateway shopping center, Normandy is used as an offbeat mall. It houses a famous soul food cafe, a salon, a florist and even a small bowling alley as well as some business services. A Winn-Dixie sits attached to one side but faces outward, and across from the entire structure is a large O'Reilly auto parts store.

 Normandy Mall still has its original weathered sign.

Still hanging on-

Regenecy Square Mall opened in 1967, when the economy was in better shape and the demographics of that side of Jacksonville were different. Today it is still open for business but it is struggling against the present day economy. It is anchored by JCPenney, then there is a food court, and then there is sits in the middle of the mall and has dual mall entrances. The entire Y-shaped wing on the other side of Belk is almost completely vacant, save for the Dillard's which has been reduced to an Outlet and only occupies the bottom floor, and maybe one or two other small stores. Most of the hallway lights are turned off. 

The Mall at Jacksonville Landing, opened in 1987, is part of an entire entertainment center for downtown Jacksonville. The Landing hosts concerts, offers a variety of restaurants and night clubs, and sits near other major downtown events, such as art shows. While it is still a highly active venue, the mall itself is showing some major decline. There are many vacant storefronts, while the rest are filled by small, independently owned businesses and art galleries. There are hardly any widely-known brand names, except for a Nine West Outlet and a branch of BBVA Compass bank.    

Large and in charge-
Orange Park Mall, Avenues Mall and St. Johns Town Center are the only three still thriving in their original form, of the ten malls Jacksonville has given us.

Orange park mall, chugging along since 1975

Below: Avenues Mall, charging forward since 1990 (left) 

 and St. John's Town Center, still growing since its debut in 2004 (right)