From Southglenn Mall to The Streets at SouthGlenn: a Centennial, CO shopping center now facing apartment plans

At the north end of Southglenn Mall, May D&F opened in 1974 under an antique stained-glass dome. The store changed its sign to Foley's, then to Macy's.

When the rest of the mall came down in 2006, it kept selling at one end while Sears held the other, and crews crushed the old concrete between them.

Around those two buildings rose The Streets at SouthGlenn, in Centennial, Colorado: open streets, a block-long park with a fountain and an outdoor fireplace, a 14-screen cinema. Sears went dark. Macy's held a liquidation sale, and the store line that began under the dome ended.

Today the two department-store buildings stand empty, roughly a third of the center's shop space. The land under both old stores has been drawn up for homes, and the first plan asked for 1,950 of them.

Southglenn Mall opens in a planned suburb

At the center of the new May D&F store, a rotunda rose 20 feet to an antique stained-glass dome.

It was the showpiece of Southglenn Mall, an enclosed shopping center that opened in August 1974 on the southwest corner of East Arapahoe Road and South University Boulevard, in unincorporated Arapahoe County south of Denver, Colorado.

The houses around it came first.

Perl-Mack had started the Southglenn subdivision in 1961 on 650 acres planned for about 1,600 homes, and the mall was meant to give that suburb a downtown.

The company made its plans public in September 1972, and crews were at work by April 1973 on a building that cost about $40 million.

Its middle section rose two levels, while one-level wings reached north and south toward the department stores, and about 5,000 parking spaces surrounded the whole thing.

Sears opened first, on its own, on August 2.

On August 15 a drum and bugle corps played, a double ribbon was cut, and Denver Dry Goods and May D&F opened with the rest of the mall.

Three department stores were open that day. The corridors between them had room for 89 stores, and 17 of those spaces were open.

95 stores and a second Perl-Mack mall

The Nautilus video arcade was running inside Southglenn by 1981. There was no food court.

Shoppers ate at counters and small cafes along the corridors, at the Coffee House in Sears, at The Greenhouse in Denver Dry Goods, or at the restaurant inside May D&F. A General Cinema triplex, opened in December 1974 on a separate lot on the northwest side, stood apart from the main building.

The empty storefronts of opening day filled in.

By 1983 the mall held 95 stores and services, where 17 had opened beside the anchors, with two bookstores, a pet shop, local jewelers, and a bank office among them.

That February the same developer opened a rival.

Perl-Mack's Southwest Plaza began trading 6.9 miles to the northwest, the first large mall to share Southglenn's part of the suburbs.

Joslins becomes the fourth department store

The mall's first full renovation, in 1987 and 1988, reached the ceiling of the south wing, where the Colorado Health Department found asbestos.

Southglenn closed while the asbestos was removed. The department stores were changing too.

Denver Dry Goods shut its store on April 30, 1987, and JCPenney reopened the space. In May 1993 May D&F took the Foley's name.

Three months after that, work began on a new store at the main entrance.

Joslins opened it in October 1994: two levels, 160,000 square feet, a $23 million investment.

The mall that had opened with three department stores had four, and its leasable space reached about 1.06 million square feet.

A new mall at Park Meadows, 4.7 miles away

In August 1996 Park Meadows opened 4.7 miles southeast with Dillard's and Nordstrom.

Foley's and Joslins joined in 1997; both already anchored Southglenn, whose sales fell once the new mall was trading.

JCPenney put its full store at Park Meadows and by 1999 kept only a Home Store at Southglenn.

Dillard's bought Joslins' parent, Mercantile Stores, in 1998, and by 1999 the Southglenn Joslins carried the Dillard's name.

Walton Street Capital, a Chicago firm, bought the mall in January 1999 and started studying a redevelopment.

Southglenn tried a cosmetic interior refresh in 2001. Smaller tenants kept leaving, and the JCPenney Home Store closed in June 2002.

By early 2005 the empty storefronts were plain to see, in a building far larger than its remaining tenants needed.

Sears and Foley's stay as the mall comes down

There had been no city around Southglenn when it opened.

Residents voted in 2000 to form the City of Centennial, and when the new city came into existence in 2001, the aging mall sat at one of the new city's most visible intersections.

In September 2005 Walton Street Capital and Alberta Development Partners announced the mall's redevelopment as The Streets at SouthGlenn, an open-air district.

Centennial set up an urban renewal authority, and that month it approved a metropolitan district allowed to borrow up to $85 million for public works: the streets, a parking garage, a central plaza, and fountains.

The enclosed mall and its Dillard's closed on February 28, 2006, the day the old Southglenn was commemorated.

Demolition started that June. Sears and Foley's stayed open at opposite ends as demolition moved through the middle.

Concrete from the old mall was recycled into the redevelopment, while Walgreens kept its pharmacy running from temporary quarters on the east side after its store was removed.

In September 2006 Foley's became Macy's. By the end of that year, two department stores were open at opposite ends of a construction site.

The Streets at SouthGlenn opens in phases

At the middle of the new center, the Commons stretched for about a block.

A play area and gardens sat around a large fountain and an outdoor fireplace.

In its first years, winter brought ice skating and a Christmas tree, summer brought concerts, and a market returned once a month.

Around the park, the old mall's single block had become a grid of smaller ones.

Shops faced internal streets lined with angled parking, apartments sat above some of the stores, and offices, a parking garage, and the Southglenn Library filled other blocks.

The rebuild cost about $310 million, against about $40 million for the mall it replaced.

The recession arrived while it was under construction, and the center opened in pieces.

Best Buy came first, in July 2008, and Whole Foods opened in June 2009.

At the dedication on August 28, 2009, Dick's Sporting Goods, Staples, and Macy's Furniture Gallery opened their doors, and a 14-screen Hollywood Theaters complex followed that November.

Work continued into 2011.

In 2012 Old Navy took a big space first meant for Barnes & Noble, with Sears holding the south end of the center and Macy's the north.

Sears and Macy's close, and housing is planned

Sears closed late in 2018 and left its building, about 141,000 square feet, empty at the south end.

Northwood Investors, which had bought the building with a group of other Sears properties, began working with Alberta on what could replace it.

The first concept, in March 2019, put housing on both department-store sites while Macy's was open: up to 1,950 homes, a height limit on the Sears land raised from 50 to 100 feet, and a retail minimum cut to 500,000 square feet.

Community meetings drew objections to the 100-foot height, the number of homes, traffic, and the effect on schools.

The version shown in November asked for 1,273 homes and a 75-foot limit on the Sears land.

The formal application in June 2021 asked for less again, and in December 2021 the City Council approved it 8-1.

The housing cap rose from 350 to 1,125 homes across the property.

Both department-store sites got a 75-foot limit, the retail minimum fell from about 910,000 to 621,000 square feet, and any housing on the Sears land would first need a public open space of at least 25,000 square feet.

Macy's announced in January 2022 that its SouthGlenn store would close, and by March the liquidation sale was under way.

The store had operated in that building since 1974, as May D&F and then as Foley's, and it was the last department store left from the original mall.

Best Buy, the first store to open in the rebuilt center back in July 2008, closed on March 2, 2024.

The large spaces once filled by Dick's Sporting Goods and Macy's Furniture Gallery had emptied as well.

With the north building dark, neither end of the center had a department store.

Apartments proposed on the old Macy's site

Alliance Residential filed plans with Centennial in April 2026 for a five-story building with 358 apartments on the former Macy's land.

An earlier round of community comments on the idea drew 436 responses. The city is still reviewing the application.

The building has to fit the 2021 rules.

In August 2025 Alberta asked for room for 550 more homes, 1,675 in all, and for 100-foot heights on part of the property, a request that drew 421 comments.

The limits have not moved: 1,125 homes, 75 feet on the old department-store sites, and at least 621,000 square feet kept for retail.

The Portola, the apartment building already on the property, holds 214 of those homes.

The Sears land is being marketed for housing, with no plans filed and the open-space requirement still attached.

The middle of the center is a separate matter.

In January 2026 an affiliate of The Luzzatto Company paid $28.1 million for the Whole Foods, Sephora, and Old Navy parcels and part of a neighboring block, leaving both department-store sites out of the deal, so the property now has several owners.

Whole Foods, Old Navy, Marshalls, the library, and the cinema, run today by Regal, are open.

In 2006 the owners kept two department stores trading and tore down the mall between them.

Those two buildings are the empty parts now, about a third of the center's retail space.

The streets laid out between them hold the shops that are still open, Whole Foods and Regal among them.