Four department stores open the mall
Wiregrass Commons Mall opened on August 6, 1986, as an enclosed regional mall at 900 Commons Drive in northwest Dothan, Alabama.
It went up on the north side of the city's main shopping corridor, where U.S. Highway 231, called Montgomery Highway on that stretch, meets the Ross Clark Circle area.
Jim Wilson & Associates developed it, and four department stores opened with it: JCPenney, Parisian, Gayfers, and McRae's. Those four had been part of the plan well before opening day.
In January 1985, the stores signed an agreement with the development that set out shared access to the property, which put the four-store layout on paper before a single shop had opened.
The mall itself was a single level, and it had an arcade from its first year, a Diamond Jim's.
By April 1988, each department store showed its name over a large entrance on the corridor, while the inline storefronts held smaller shoe and jewelry shops.
Pic 'n Pay Shoes and Friedman's Jewelers were two of them, trading less than two years after the mall's first day.
Gayfers becomes Dillard's, McRae's is left out
Gayfers belonged to Mercantile Stores Company, and in August 1998 Dillard's bought Mercantile.
The stores that came with the deal took the Dillard's name in 1999, the same year the mall was renovated, and the Gayfers name over the Dothan entrance gave way to Dillard's.
Belk went after two of the other chains in separate deals.
In July 2005, it bought 47 Proffitt's and McRae's stores, but the purchase left out four McRae's stores in Alabama, and the one at Wiregrass Commons was among them.
Parisian came into Belk's hands the following year.
Belk agreed in August 2006 to buy the chain from Saks, and when the purchase closed that October, the Dothan Parisian was part of it.
At Wiregrass Commons, that left the McRae's as the one department store Belk had passed over. By early 2008 McRae's had left the building.
Belk is rebuilt in the old Parisian building
A new Belk opened at Wiregrass Commons in October 2008, in the old Parisian building. PREIT had come to own the mall through a merger.
Crown American Realty Trust bought Wiregrass Commons from Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in November 2002, and in November 2003 the Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust, known as PREIT, merged with Crown and took over its malls, the one in Dothan among them.
Belk's plan was to put its own name on the former Parisian stores during 2007.
In Dothan, PREIT bought the former Parisian building and rebuilt it for Belk.
The part PREIT acquired, about 65,000 square feet, was enlarged into a department store of about 85,000 square feet, and the job stayed close to its schedule through 2008.
The rest of the mall was redone around the new store, and work on the common areas wrapped up in the last three months of the year.
Burlington moves into a refinished mall
Those common areas were refreshed in 2008, with repainting, replacement corridor carpet, and reworked mall entrances.
Wet Seal, The Children's Place, American Eagle Outfitters, and Aeropostale were among the inline stores during the PREIT years.
The food court had eight units and a carousel.
The former McRae's box took longer, though PREIT ran it as part of the same 2008 project.
In March 2008, PREIT planned to put Burlington Coat Factory there, in a space then estimated at 80,000 square feet, and aimed for an opening in the second quarter of 2009.
By June the space set aside for Burlington had reached about 95,000 square feet.
By September the opening had been pushed back to the third quarter.
The empty box was handed over for Burlington's fit-out at the end of 2008.
Burlington Coat Factory opened in September 2009, and with it the mall had four large stores trading again.
PREIT's three-mall sale comes in lower
The mall's community room became a polling place.
In April 2013, the Dothan Board of Commissioners signed off on renting it for $600 as the District 6B voting site for that August's municipal election, and the City came back to it for later votes, a 2016 special election among them, rented at $400.
That same April, City staff spent a day at the food-court entrance signing residents up for iRECYCLE, the expanded curbside recycling program.
PREIT put the mall up for sale two years later.
In July 2015, it agreed to sell Wiregrass Commons, Gadsden Mall, and New River Valley Mall as a package for $95.4 million.
Before the deal closed, it ran into tenant setbacks, and one of them was in Dothan: the bankruptcy of Hancock Fabrics reached its store at Wiregrass Commons.
The price was renegotiated.
In March 2016, Farallon Capital Management bought the three malls for $66 million, and PREIT's run in Dothan was over.
Namdar buys the mall and the food court thins
In 2018 Namdar Realty Group paid Farallon $21 million for Wiregrass Commons, then about 634,000 square feet.
Crown American had paid $40.25 million for it in 2002.
All four anchor boxes were filled when Namdar arrived, by Belk, Burlington, Dillard's, and JCPenney.
Outside, the food-court parking lot doubled as an event ground.
From March 11 to 21, 2021, the Family Fun Fest carnival set up rides, games, and food there, with a $10 unlimited-ride wristband on opening night, $5 general admission, and free entry for children under five.
Inside, the food court and the carousel were running, and Santa, the Easter Bunny, and craft shows came around in 2021 and 2022.
Around them, the mall was thinning out. By May 2021, the carpet laid in 2008 was heavily stained, and many storefronts were empty.
Dante's Pizza, a fixture of the food court, closed at the end of that month.
In November 2021, the food court lost Chick-fil-A, one of the longest-running food businesses in the mall.
Toy Town arrives as the store count falls
By January 2024, mall management was casting widely for ways to fill the empty stores.
Toy Town was already there, local businesses were a priority, pizza, hibachi, and vegan restaurants were being pursued, and professional wrestling had taken Saturday nights.
Departures kept coming anyway. Rack Room Shoes put up closing signs in early January 2025 and shut on January 11.
Just before it closed, the mall listed 39 stores.
The same winter, in February 2025, the mall came up in Dothan's strategic planning as a large, highly visible property whose state concerned city leaders, though the City did not own it and the planning produced no City program for it.
The food-court parking lot opened 2026 with a booking: Cirque Italia scheduled its Water Circus Nautilus there for late January into early February, with tickets from $15 to $65.
Burlington, an anchor through 2021 and 2022, left too.
The store that had filled the McRae's box moved to a location of its own on Ross Clark Circle, and by February 2026, its space inside the mall stood empty.
Residents petition the City about the mall
In October 2025, the mall was evacuated and closed while gunfire was investigated.
On July 3, 2026, gunfire put the mall and its stores into an immediate lockdown.
No one was hurt. The building took minor damage, and some stores closed for the night.
In mid-July residents presented a petition to the Dothan City Commission.
It asked for armed security, more surveillance, and accountability from the owner, and it asked the City to look at lawful ways to acquire the property if safety did not improve.
The mall had turned down one new entry rule before.
In September 2024, when its sister property, Eastdale Mall in Montgomery, brought in a clear-bag policy, Wiregrass Commons did not adopt it.
In August 2026, it widened its rule for young visitors.
By 2020, anyone under 18 had to come with a parent or guardian aged 21 or older on Friday and Saturday evenings after 6.
The new rule covered every evening after 5, with security watching the doors and minors without an adult subject to being sent out.
In September 2026, a private proposal called the Phoenix Project suggested splitting a revived mall into four hubs: one for dining, one for entertainment, one for business and professional use, and one for health and wellness.
Wiregrass Commons at 40, open with space to lease
Forty years after it opened, Wiregrass Commons is an operating enclosed mall.
Monday through Saturday, it opens at 11 a.m. and closes at 8 p.m., and on Sunday it runs from noon to 6 p.m., though individual stores can set their own hours.
Namdar Realty Group still owns it, and Mason Asset Management and CH Capital Group are marketing its empty space to tenants.
Namdar has announced no closing date, demolition plan, or redevelopment plan.
The petition has led to no City takeover or transfer of the property, and neither Namdar nor the City has adopted the Phoenix Project.
Three department stores trade there: Belk, JCPenney, and Dillard's, which fills the largest building, about 163,000 square feet on two levels.
Rainbow USA is also counted among the anchors, and smaller national chains trade beside local and service tenants in the corridors.
Burlington sells from its Dothan store at 3102 Ross Clark Circle, and the box it left behind is on the market with the rest of the open space.
The food court and its carousel remain part of the mall, and the August entry rule is in force, with an exception for teenagers who work there and come in for their shifts.
At the end of 2015, the last full year under PREIT, the mall was nearly 95 percent occupied.
Now 54 of its spaces, about 240,000 square feet in all, are offered for lease, and 31 retailers are listed, against 39 just before Rack Room Shoes closed.
District 6A still votes in the community room.
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