Normandale Shopping Center in Montgomery, Alabama had no roof over the middle, and that was the point. Dedicated on September 10, 1954, at what is now 500 East Patton Avenue, it had 29 stores, covered walkways, and parking fields out front.
Loveman's took 84,000 square feet on two levels. A 1957 arcade pushed the complex to 325,000 square feet and about 50 tenants.
Enclosed malls arrived in 1970 and 1977 and took the trade east. Loveman's closed in 1981. By 1997 the center was 42 percent leased, and it sold in 1998 for $2.4 million and again in 2008 for $1.8 million.
A few businesses still open their doors there. Most of the old arcade came down in 2018.
Normandale opens on September 10, 1954
Ground was broken on December 20, 1952, on 22.5 acres in south Montgomery, Alabama, three miles below the State Capitol.
On September 10, 1954, Jason H. Smith, then the city's oldest resident, cut the ribbon on Normandale Shopping Center.
Aronov Realty developed it, the company's first shopping center, with the Montgomery firm Sherlock, Smith & Adams among its designers.
The first phase held 186,000 square feet of leasable space and 29 stores and services.
Loveman, Joseph & Loeb of Birmingham took 84,000 of those square feet on two levels, its first suburban branch in the city, at a point when Montgomery's department-store trade still meant driving downtown.
Toyland, a cafeteria, and a doctors' building
The supermarket was the strange one architecturally: an 18,000-square-foot Kwik Chek behind a curved storefront filled with tall arched glass.
Lee's Self-Service Drugs, Toyland, Roslyn Eagle Furniture & Gifts, and Francis Cafeteria opened along the same run of shops.
Then there was the Doctor's Building, six medical practices and two dental practices inside a shopping center.
One trip could cover groceries, lunch, and a filling.
Nothing was enclosed. Storefronts faced the parking fields, covered walkways handled the rain, and shoppers stayed outdoors moving between stores.
That was normal in 1954, before enclosed and air-conditioned malls became the suburban standard.
The 1957 arcade and Normandale Shopping City
Construction on an addition began in August 1956, and the Normandale Arcade opened on March 7, 1957.
Marian McKnight, Miss America 1957, appeared at the dedication.
The arcade pulled shoppers off the parking lot into a pedestrian concourse behind the original wings.
F.W. Woolworth left its smaller 1954 space for a two-level, 30,000-square-foot store, and W.T. Grant took another 30,000.
Normandale had opened with 186,000 square feet. After the arcade it had 325,000, roughly 50 stores, and parking for 1,000 cars.
The ads started calling it Normandale Shopping City.
Cohen's Records, Twix 'N Teens, and Western Auto took smaller spaces, and a 15,700-square-foot A&P went up beside Grant by 1963.
Two enclosed malls and a bankrupt anchor
Montgomery Mall opened in April 1970, 2.7 miles east, with the entire shopping trip under one air-conditioned roof.
Normandale held on: 46 tenants in 1974, still advertising itself as the fashion center of southern Alabama.
Eastdale Mall opened in August 1977, six miles northeast, and became the mall Montgomery drove to.
Loveman's parent, City Stores Company, filed for bankruptcy reorganization in July 1979.
The chain was liquidated, and the Normandale store closed in 1980, emptying 84,000 square feet and leaving the center without a department store.
Between December 1980 and March 1981, the owners gave the place a face-lift and a new name, Normandale Mall.
The school that never moved in
In 1994 Montgomery Public Schools won a $7 million federal magnet-school grant and picked the shopping center as the future home of the Carver Creative and Performing Arts Center.
A tornado ended that.
Accounts of the school project date the damage to 1995; federal storm records put an F1 tornado through the Normandale and Cloverdale sections on March 6, 1996, when strong wind toppled the WCOV television tower nearby.
Which storm did which part of the damage isn't settled by the record.
The school went elsewhere, and the arcade was closed off instead of rebuilt. Repair money went to the frontage, where tenants were still paying rent.
42 percent leased, then sold twice
Mark Development Group bought the center in 1985; it later passed to Mark Centers Trust.
At the end of 1997, the trust held 295,600 square feet of leasable space here, 42 percent of it leased.
Winn-Dixie, successor to Kwik Chek, was still the anchor.
The Alabama Department of Public Health moved out when its leases expired in April 1997, driving a $338,000 drop in minimum rent for the year.
Renamed Acadia Realty Trust, the company sold its weakest properties, Normandale first, on December 30, 1998, for $2.4 million.
It sold again on July 31, 2008, for $1.8 million, with $1.3 million financed by the seller in a note that put both sides in federal court by 2011.
Wrecking crews take the arcade in 2018
A flea market had taken over the old Loveman's building.
Mega Meats Grocery Outlet, the largest store left on the site, closed in February 2017, after taking the grocery space from Calhoun Foods, which took it from Winn-Dixie.
Demolition began the week of August 13, 2018, on the vacant rear buildings.
They had deteriorated into health hazards, and because most could no longer be occupied, they held the occupancy figure down and made financing harder.
The council member for District 5 described new retail, a hotel, entertainment, and a park, at an estimated $30 million.
The Grant and A&P section survived, along with the 1954 frontage.
What's left at 500 East Patton Avenue
The $30 million never arrived. There is no hotel and no rebuilt shopping center.
By March 2026, most of the property at 500 East Patton Avenue sat empty, with a few businesses still open behind the old frontage and whole sections outside any retail use.
The place still has an audience in Montgomery.
That March, a longtime Montgomery resident had a new book out about Normandale's golden years, the stretch from the mid-1950s into the 1970s when this was where Montgomery shopped.
The stores that are left keep regular hours, and most of the arcade their customers once walked through came down eight years ago.
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