Center court at Palm Beach Mall held a vertical installation called the Wonderfall, which used glycerin so it looked like falling water. The 2000 remodel took it out and put in a seahorse fountain.
That remodel was meant to save the West Palm Beach mall. A new Dillard's opened that February. Lord & Taylor closed the next year and its building came down.
By January 2010 the concourse was shut, and demolition three years later removed about 1.4 million square feet.
Tanger runs 457,300 square feet of open-air stores on the same ground today. Here's what stood there before, and how all of it came out.
Palm Beach Mall was built on filled swamp
Before anything could go up west of downtown West Palm Beach, the ground had to be raised.
Gee and Jenson Engineers dropped 30 million cubic yards of fill into what had been wetland.
Louis R. Perini Sr. pushed 12th Street west through Roosevelt Estates, renamed it Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard, and in 1966 finished Palm Beach County's first piece of Interstate 95, a 3.6-mile stretch.
The Edward J. DeBartolo Corporation announced the mall in September 1965: 76.5 acres, 2.6 miles northwest of downtown, a budget near $20 million, designed by Herbert Johnson.
Palm Beach Mall opened on October 26, 1967 as an enclosed regional shopping center with about 860,000 square feet of leasable space, anchored by JCPenney, Jordan Marsh, and Richards.
Governor Claude R. Kirk Jr., Mayor Reid Moore Jr., and Miss USA Cheryl Ann Patton opened it.
The advertising called it the largest enclosed mall in the Southeast.
The waterfall that never splashed
Inside was one wide concourse on a single level, running between multi-level department stores and planted with 11,000 tropical plants, roughly 100 of them palms.
Center court held the Wonderfall, the interior's best-remembered object.
It used glycerin rather than water, so it read as a falling sheet with none of the splash or basin a fountain needs.
The opening lineup ran to 87 stores and services and looked nothing like a modern mall. Woolworth took 63,000 square feet.
Food Fair ran a full supermarket and Walgreens ran a drugstore, so groceries were part of a trip to the mall.
CinemaNational added four screens on December 22, 1972.
JCPenney had been a Clematis Street store before it moved west.
West Palm Beach's Downtown Development Authority was created in 1967, the same year the mall opened.
Five department stores by 1981
The mall's biggest growth came at the end of the 1970s.
Burdines dedicated a two-level store of 188,600 square feet on November 30, 1979, with a parking garage beside it.
Lord & Taylor followed on February 1, 1980 with 118,000 square feet on two levels, its first store in Florida.
Richards liquidated that year. Sears took the building and eventually enlarged it to roughly 163,000 square feet.
The floor changed in the 1980s too. The original terrazzo came out and tile went down.
By 1981, Palm Beach Mall had JCPenney, Jordan Marsh, Burdines, Lord & Taylor, and Sears: five department stores in one building, with an interstate ramp at the door.
The 1987 remodel and the 1990s losses
Pantry Pride, successor to Food Fair, closed in 1987.
Part of the supermarket floor became Treats, a 13-bay food court that opened on November 21, 1987, along with new skylights and a lofty ceiling.
The Gardens Mall opened the next year in Palm Beach Gardens with newer buildings and an upscale tenant list.
Burdines soon turned its Palm Beach Mall store into a clearance location.
Then the anchors started coming out. Jordan Marsh left in 1991.
Mervyn's took the building in early 1992 and gave it up in 1997, and in February 1998 the building was demolished, leaving a hole at one end of the center.
Woolworth closed in July 1997, and its floor was cut up for Borders, DSW, and Mars Music. The old cinema became an Old Navy.
Simon Property Group and DeBartolo combined in August 1996, and the mall went into the Simon portfolio.
$40 million, and one new Dillard's
Palm Beach Mall got a roughly $40 million renovation to repair what the 1990s had done, finishing on April 6, 2000.
The interior was redecorated on an 1880s Flagler-hotel theme, and the food court reopened as Sea Side Cafe.
A new two-level Dillard's of about 203,000 square feet opened February 23, 2000 on the ground where Jordan Marsh and Mervyn's had been.
The remodel also removed the Wonderfall. An ordinary decorative fountain with a seahorse theme went in its place.
The repair didn't hold. Lord & Taylor closed on September 10, 2001, and its building was demolished for a replacement anchor that never came.
Walgreens, an original 1967 tenant, left in 2002 after 35 years. Burdines became Macy's in 2005 without moving an inch.
Emptied on purpose, then stuck that way
Palm Beach Mall LLC borrowed $55.4 million from JPMorgan in September 2002, secured by the mall.
By mid-decade Simon wanted the property replaced: an IKEA of roughly 290,000 square feet, 700,000 square feet of retail, offices, and 500 apartments.
Clearing a mall of tenants is expensive when their leases have years to run, so from 2007 Simon stopped renewing.
Leases lapsed. Terms got shorter. Occupancy at the end of 2007 was still 82.3 percent.
Then the recession arrived. Dillard's closed in late 2008.
On January 8, 2009 Macy's named its 190,000-square-foot store, with 71 employees, as one of 11 it would shut.
IKEA walked away, and the loan defaulted in March 2009. By December 31 occupancy was 16.8 percent, with only JCPenney and Sears left as anchors.
Sears closed January 17, 2010. The enclosed mall closed for good on January 31.
Palm Beach Outlets replaced the concourse
The lender group took the property at foreclosure auction with a bid of $1.8 million, and Simon disposed of it on March 31, 2010.
At the end of 2008 the mall had been valued at $14.7 million, against a loan that started at $55.4 million.
New England Development, Eastern Real Estate, and Lubert-Adler assembled roughly 90 acres in October 2011 for a $250 million outlet project.
West Palm Beach commissioners approved it unanimously in August 2012.
Demolition began January 17, 2013 and took down about 1.4 million square feet of structures.
JCPenney, the last original anchor still trading, closed that April after more than 45 years, its sales already sinking while the wrecking work went on around it.
What the old mall site is now
Palm Beach Outlets opened to the public on February 14, 2014 with more than 100 stores and more than 1,000 workers, about 460,000 square feet across 60 acres.
Shoppers walk outdoor lanes between storefronts now instead of one air-conditioned corridor.
Marketplace at the Outlets filled in next door through fall 2014, and Whole Foods opened there on February 25, 2015.
Ownership kept moving. Clarion Partners came into the outlet center in 2015.
Tanger took over marketing, leasing, and management in July 2022, renamed it Tanger Outlets Palm Beach, and carried the 457,300-square-foot center as a managed property at the end of March 2026.
Invesco bought Marketplace in June 2025 for $133.3 million.
No part of the 1967 building is left on the site.
People come now for Saks OFF 5TH, Nike, Coach, and the Whole Foods next door, on the ground where JCPenney stood for 45 years.
Sources and further reading
- Tanger Outlets Palm Beach - Official Center Page - Tanger, current center page. Provides the official current identity, store directory, and visitor information for Tanger Outlets Palm Beach.
- Central County: Westward Expansion - Historical Society of Palm Beach County. Documents the land filling, Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard, early I-95 construction, and the mall's place in West Palm Beach's westward expansion.
- Palm Beach Mall - State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, 1967 archival record. Provides the October 26, 1967 opening date and archival context for the original mall.
- Wells Fargo Bank 2003 PMI LLC v. Palm Beach Mall LLC - Florida Fourth District Court of Appeal via FindLaw, September 30, 2015. Documents the 2002 mortgage loan, the de-leasing strategy, the 2009 default, and foreclosure proceedings.
- Simon Property Group Form 10-K for Fiscal 2011 - Simon Property Group / U.S. SEC. Records Palm Beach Mall's March 31, 2010 disposition date.
- Palm Beach Outlets Ribbon Cutting Celebrates Palm Beach County's First Outlet Center - New England Development, February 14, 2014. Documents the opening of Palm Beach Outlets with more than 100 stores and more than 1,000 employees.
- Tanger Partners with Clarion at Tanger Outlets Palm Beach, Florida - Tanger, August 2, 2022. Records the Clarion partnership, Tanger rebranding, and Tanger's assumption of marketing, leasing, and property management.
- Starwood Sells Whole Foods-Anchored Mall in West Palm for $133M - Commercial Observer, June 3, 2025. Reports Invesco's $133.3 million acquisition of the adjacent Marketplace property based on property records.
- Tanger Inc. Form 10-Q for the Quarter Ended June 30, 2026 - Tanger Inc., August 6, 2026. Lists Tanger Outlets Palm Beach as a managed property with 457,326 square feet.
Current information last reviewed: August 9, 2026
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