Sarasota Square Mall, Sarasota, FL

Finally! After 8 long months! I had time to go to 2 new malls! :D

Sarasota Square Mall 

8201 S Tamiami Trail, Sarasota, FL 34238  

Sarasota Square Mall is significant to someone else this time.

This is Max. We just got married! As part of our honeymoon, we traveled to Venice and Bradenton to see some places that were significant to our teenage years. These cities are about 4 hours south-west of where we live. For Max, Sarasota Square was the one mall that had a place in his history. 

My husband is not a mall guy. But in his early teenage years (around the turn of the millennium), he was involved in a church and youth group during the brief time he lived in the area with his family. The other teenagers from that church often hung out here at the mall, because at that time, it had an arcade and it still has the movie theater now.  

 This is a typical modern/retro resting spot outside a common JCPenney store front towards the back of the mall, where we entered.

 This is something new, however. Of all the malls I have shopped and featured, I never saw one that had one of the large store fronts occupied by a public library. Did they want family time to be educational AND fun?

 One of its sprawling single-story corridors.

 The widest part of the mall, which is, I think, near the center.

 The food court, which has been recently updated for a tropical and modern feel with fancy fans and lighting. Not pictured here, but to the right of the food court is the AMC theater front.

This mall again wins the award for "uniqueness". Nowhere else in Florida (or anywhere else I shopped for that matter) have I seen a mall that got a Costco attached directly to it. On the premises? sure. But not in place of a department store. It sits at the end of the corridor by the food court and if it weren't for the store greeter standing at the wide entranceway taking membership id's, it would be easy to wander in there, seeing the TV's and aisles of other merch, and think this was just another part of the mall.

So to conclude this lovely tour, here are the history and stats:

History, as researched from other websites and blogs:
This mall began as an open-air plaza in 1957, growing and adding anchor stores throughout the 1960's until it began to become enclosed in 1973. Work began on making it a full-sized enclosed mall in 1976 and concluded in fall 1977. It was around 766,000 square feet at that time. It had 3 anchors and a movie theater. Another wing was added along with a facelift began to be in the works in 1986, finally completed in 1989 with the mall now being over 975,000 square feet. Anchors changed and died over the years. The mall was bought by Westfield in 2003 and another renovation began in 2005, with a newer bigger movie theater being added by the end of 2006. In 2009, a Dillards was shuttered and demolished. This is where the Costco now sits and the mall now breaches 1,000,000 square feet.

Our added notes:  It would Make sense that Max swears that one movie theater was removed and a larger one was added in a different place. If Max was 13 in the year 2000, he would have seen the old theater and his beloved arcade would still have been where the new AMC now sits.

We visited this mall once in the past, in May 2011. We were leaving the beach to escape a thunderstorm and he brought us to the mall because he remembered it. We fled inside to escape a deluge of rain. This was just before I started taking an interest in studying malls, but I didn't remember seeing a Costco. I couldn't remember seeing anything after the food court, actually. If Dillard's was closed in 2009, it's possible that a boarded up storefront was all that greeted us that day. Now the bright, massive red "Costco" sign caught my eye and drew me over to that spot at the end of the corridor by the food court.

Mall type: A Westfield mall with a sprawling one-story layout.
Area type: predominately middle class families and retirees
Shopper types: families of different ethnicities, as well as retirees. Most of them where caucasian or hispanic.
Anchor Stores: JCPenney, Sears and Macy's cluster at the west end of the mall. AMC Theaters and Costco dominate the East end.
Other Stores: Express, Justice for Girls, Hollister, Forever XXI, Best Buy mobile, a number of jewelry stores and family-owned fashion stores to name a few.
Unusual features: Library, Costco, a food market called "Yoder's" that features some health foods and local goods and some empty store space utilized to make lounges for the customers.
Who does it accommodate?: Families and individuals of various ages of middle and possible lower economic classes. It is a one-stop all-inclusive experience for its shoppers because of not only the fashion and leisure shopping, but also the entertainment (movie theater), educational elements (library) and necessity shopping (groceries and home supplies at  Yoder's and also at Costco, if you have a membership there)
What it lacks: Since it's more of the middle class family mall, it doesn't have much higher end designer fashion, like Coach or Dior.
Signs of decline: minimal-moderate. Some stores have vacated, but this mall seems to do a lot of things to creatively utilize the space.
Over all rating: 8/10