Westfield SouthPark

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Mall facts and statistics
Westfield SouthPark

Location	Strongsville, Ohio, USA
Opening date	1996
Developer	The Richard E. Jacobs Group (original)
Management	The Westfield Group
Owner	The Westfield Group
No. of stores and services	140
No. of anchor tenants	5
Total retail floor area	1.4 million ft²
No. of floors	2
Website	http://westfield.com/southpark

Westfield SouthPark, formerly SouthPark Center, is an enclosed shopping mall in Strongsville, Ohio. Its anchor stores are Dillard's, Macy's, JCPenney, Sears, and Dick's Sporting Goods.

1 History
2 Anchors
3 Notable Stores
4 External links

[edit] History

As early as the 1960s, the intersection of Royalton Road (SR 82) and Howe Road in the fast-growing suburb of Strongsville was coveted for commercial use. A secret plan by former Cleveland Browns ownwer Art Modell to build a new stadium at the site was exposed by the media in the 1980 and later scrapped. The land was eventually sold to the Richard E. Jacobs Group, which later unveiled its first plans for a major mall. The Higbee Company and May Company Ohio, Cleveland's two department store companies, announed that they would join as anchors.

After another decade, numerous legal battles and name changes for Higbee's and May Company Ohio, ground was broken for the new $200 million SouthPark Center in 1993. The opening took place in October 1996, with Dillard's, Kaufmann's, JCPenney and Sears as the anchor tenants for the two-level mall. Kohl's was also an anchor, though on the outlying perimeter road surrounding the mall. With its upstairs food court and grand "Porte Cochere" main entrance, SouthPark has proven to be wildly popular with most Strongsville residents (especially teenagers and young adults) as well as those from northern Medina County, but it also stole sales from nearby malls as well as Downtown Cleveland.

The Westfield Group acquired the shopping center in early 2002 from the Jacobs Group, and renamed it "Westfield Shoppingtown SouthPark", dropping the "Shoppingtown" name in June 2005. In 2006 it commenced a massive a $150 million expansion and reconfiguration of the center. Dick's Sporting Goods opened in late summer and Kaufmann's was renamed Macy's on September 9, 2006. A Cinemark multiplex is scheduled to open in Spring 2007.