Park Plaza Mall sits at West Markham Street and North University Avenue in Little Rock, Arkansas, with a Dillard's store anchoring each end.
The chain's tie to the place goes back to 1965, when a Gus Blass department store opened at the open-air Park Plaza Shopping Center. The name became Dillard's by 1974.
When most of the old center came down in 1987 and was rebuilt as an enclosed mall, it reopened in 1988 with two Dillard's instead of one.
Dillard's owned its own buildings, the land under them, and related parking. So when the rest of the mall went through foreclosure in 2021 and sold for a $100,000 bid against an $86 million debt, the anchors weren't part of it.
Owners have come and gone around the Dillard's stores. Here's how a hometown department store outlasted one mall owner after another.
The brook that ran through Park Plaza
A brook once ran across part of the ground floor.
There was a fountain, garden courts, partially covered walkways open to the Arkansas sky, and a parking field big enough for 1,870 cars.
That was Park Plaza Shopping Center when it opened on December 1, 1960, at West Markham Street and what was then North Hayes Street (now North University Avenue) in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Open-air, two levels, built for a city pushing west after the war.
The mall there now looks nothing like it.
Park Plaza Mall, at 6000 W. Markham Street, has three levels, a glass roof, and no brook.
In 1987, a developer razed the old center, left Dillard's standing, and built a different mall on the same ground.
The old center was still open. Across the street, a newer mall was taking shoppers away.
A shopping center for everyday errands
You could run most of your week there.
Buy groceries, get a haircut, drop off the dry cleaning, bowl a few frames at Park Plaza Lanes, eat at Morrison's Cafeteria, grab a doughnut on the way out.
The early roster ran to a hardware store, a florist, a tire-and-auto shop, a gas station, Sterling 5 & 10, Crank's Save On Drugs, Joe's Hobby Shop, and Gold's House of Fashions.
The Little Rock developer Elbert Fausett built it on 23 acres, with a design by Richard Savage of Cincinnati.
Deliveries ran below grade, out of sight, so the walkways stayed clean.
By 1960, the city already had at least 11 shopping centers.
Park Plaza was built as a 23-acre village, and meant for repeat visits.
It didn't have a department store yet.
How a Little Rock chain took the anchor
It got one in 1965. The anchor came through Gus Blass, an old Little Rock department-store name.
William T. Dillard had bought Pfeifer's in 1963 and Gus Blass in 1964 to build his company's base in the city, and on March 18, 1965, he opened a two-level, 63,500 sq ft Gus Blass store at the center.
The names kept moving.
Blass and Pfeifer combined into Pfeifer-Blass in 1968, and in 1974 the stores took the Dillard's name.
The Park Plaza store later grew to 198,000 sq ft.
Dillard's also had a different kind of hold on Park Plaza.
It owned its own ground. The company owns its buildings, the land under them, and the parking around them.
That detail stayed quiet for decades. Then it mattered.
The enclosed rival across the street
In 1967, a competitor opened just across Markham, on University Avenue.
It was called The Mall, later University Mall, and it had a roof and air conditioning.
In an Arkansas July, that mattered.
More enclosed malls followed. Southwest City Mall in 1969.
McCain Mall in North Little Rock in 1973, which grew into one of Central Arkansas's strongest.
Shoppers could stand at the same intersection and see both Park Plaza and its newer neighbor, and the newer one kept pulling traffic across the street.
Park Plaza was the old format at one of the busiest corners in town, and it was losing.
By the mid-1980s, the open-air center had fallen behind and slid into foreclosure.
A Dallas developer looked at the wreck and decided to start over.
Tearing it down to start over
Herring Marathon bought Park Plaza out of its mid-1980s trouble and chose to start over.
The old center was aging, outclassed by the enclosed mall across the street, and still carrying pieces of its 1960s life, including Park Plaza Lanes.
In July 1987, the company demolished it, leaving only Dillard's standing while the rest changed around it.
Construction ran into 1988. The bill came to $55 million.
What opened that July was a different building on the same lot.
Three levels, a glass-covered interior, escalators, underground parking, and a second Dillard's on the far side.
A gala on July 27, 1988, opened the doors with 40 stores ready and more than 60 to come.
The new mall held 540,300 sq ft of leasable space and parking for 2,200 cars.
Two Dillard's under a glass roof
The rebuilt mall had two Dillard's. The original store became Dillard's West, for women's and home goods.
A new two-level, 86,300 sq ft Dillard's East opened across the way for men's and children's, with smaller stores running between the two anchors.
The lowest floor was the Garden Level, with a seven-bay food court and United Artists' seven-screen multiplex.
Above it sat the First and Second levels.
By the CBL years, the three floors had simpler names: First, Second, and Third.
The stores were what you'd expect from a 1988 mall: American Eagle, The Gap, Express, The Limited, Claire's, Brentano's Books, Luby's Cafeteria, Oshman's Sporting Goods.
The numbers moved fast. Before the rebuild, the old center sold $100 a square foot. After, sales hit $350.
Not everything held. Boardwalk Fries signed a food-court lease in March 1989, opened that May, and closed by March 1990.
The fight over unpaid rent reached federal court, where the mall owner won in 1992.
The CBL years, then the slide
In June 2004, CBL & Associates Properties bought Park Plaza for $77.5 million.
The Tennessee mall company ran it for 17 years, through its last strong stretch and its long decline.
CBL refreshed the interior and exterior in 2006 and added a 25,000 sq ft Forever 21 as a junior anchor.
Talbots got its own outside door, one of the few stores besides Dillard's you could enter without stepping inside the mall.
Then the ground shifted under enclosed malls across the country.
Online shopping pulled spending away. Chains thinned their store counts. COVID emptied the corridors in 2020.
CBL, carrying more than 100 properties, announced its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing on November 2, 2020.
Harder events marked those years too.
After the mall closed one night in February 2013, an aggravated robbery at the food-court Sbarro killed one employee and seriously injured another.
A 2015 civil case over the mall's security produced a $12.8 million total verdict, including $2.8 million against the property's ownership entity and its security contractor, before an Arkansas appeals court reversed and dismissed that judgment in 2018.
A $100,000 bid for an $86.2 million debt
Park Plaza stayed open through the bankruptcy. CBL still lost it.
The Park Plaza loan had defaulted in 2020, and by early 2021 the debt on it had grown past $86 million.
A receiver took over in March 2021. The foreclosure finished that October.
The auction was the strange part.
At the Pulaski County courthouse on October 28, 2021, Deutsche Bank was the only bidder and took the mall property for a $100,000 bid, credited against an $86.2 million judgment.
The two Dillard's weren't part of it.
Because the company owned its buildings, land, and parking outright, the foreclosure swept the corridors and the small shops and never touched the anchors.
That ownership detail kept the mall's two strongest stores clear of the wreck.
In March 2023, Second Horizon Capital bought the 268,000 sq ft non-Dillard's portion for $25 million to $27 million and hired JLL to lease and run it.
At the sale, at least 10 of 62 storefronts sat empty.
What's open on West Markham now
Park Plaza is still open. JLL runs it; the address is still 6000 W. Markham Street, and the 2026 directory lists 67 entries.
Both Dillard's still anchor it, women's and home on one end, men's and children's on the other.
Between them: H&M, American Eagle, Altar'd State, JD Sports, Victoria's Secret, Foot Locker, Talbots, Vans, Zumiez, Build-A-Bear, and Vintage Stock.
Miniso opened its first Arkansas store there in March 2025.
Mr Brews Taphouse opened its first Arkansas location that April.
Chick-fil-A, Auntie Anne's, and Millie's Fish-N-Shrimp work the food court.
Security stayed part of the picture.
Police first reported three injuries after an isolated shooting on Black Friday 2024, then put the final number at two, both non-life-threatening, and the new owners had already put security high on the list.
In 2025, the city leased a 500 sq ft police office on the second level for $10, total, over five years.
Across West Markham Street, the mall that once beat Park Plaza is gone.
University Mall closed in 2007 and came down; a Target and the Park Avenue center sit on its old ground.
The open-air underdog got knocked flat in 1987, and the enclosed mall built on its old ground is the last one left at the corner.
