The Mall at University Town Center is a two-level indoor shopping mall in Sarasota, the kind with department stores at the ends and a long corridor of shops in between.
What makes it unusual is its timing. It opened in 2014, when almost no one in the country was building enclosed malls anymore, which made it one of only two under construction nationally at the time.
It runs on surface parking lots that tilt toward both floors, so you can walk straight into the upper or lower level without stairs. A long skylight overhead has louvers angled to block the Florida afternoon sun.
Near Dillard's on the lower level, oversized soft sculptures shaped like sea creatures fill a children's play area, a nod to the region's coastline. Built against the trend, it has outlasted the assumption that the trend was right.
University Town Center's Long Road From a 1993 Approval to a Mall
The framework came first. Sarasota County approved an early development concept for the land in the southwest quadrant of Interstate 75 and University Parkway on July 27, 1993, setting out room for retail, offices, hotels, and housing long before any mall existed.
Benderson Development entered the area in 1998, buying the former Sarasota Outlet Center near the interstate.
The outlet center stood mostly vacant and physically distressed, and Benderson remodeled it, fixed the parking and landscaping, and reopened it as The Shoppes at University Center, with Bonefish Grill and Marshalls among the early tenants.
Other Benderson centers followed on the north side of University Parkway, including The Square at UTC, anchored by Home Depot, and The Market at UTC, anchored by Fresh Market.
A larger enclosed mall took shape in plans during the early 2000s.
A 2007 version with The Forbes Company and Benderson promised a two-level, 138,000-square-foot Nordstrom set to open no later than fall 2010, inside a mixed-use district of shops, restaurants, hotels, offices, and homes.
Then the credit and housing markets collapsed. The recession pushed the project back, financing tightened, and growth forecasts weakened. The four-anchor concept was cut to three. Nordstrom was never built.
The Mall at University Town Center: A Two-Year Sprint to Opening Day
What finally moved forward was a 50-50 venture between Taubman Centers and Benderson Development. Taubman handled development, leasing, and management; Benderson held the land and the surrounding district.
The partners put up equal equity and borrowed roughly $225 million to build it, against a total cost of $315 million.
The ceremonial groundbreaking came on October 15, 2012, with the opening set for exactly two years out.
The program called for an 880,000-square-foot, two-level enclosed mall with more than 100 specialty stores and restaurants.
The general contractor dck worldwide built it; JPRA Architects designed it; Selbert Perkins Design Collaborative handled graphics, Horton Lees Brogden the lighting, and Grissim Metz Andriese Associates the landscape, with financing from Wells Fargo.
At the time, it counted as one of only two enclosed regional malls under construction nationally.
The work was expected to support 1,000 construction jobs and 2,000 permanent retail jobs. Two years from groundbreaking to doors open left no slack in the schedule.
Opening Day 2014: Sarasota's First New Enclosed Mall in Four Decades
A charity preview just before the public opening drew several thousand people and raised $250,000 for area causes. Then, on October 16, 2014, the doors opened to the public.
It was Sarasota's first new large enclosed mall in four decades and the first new enclosed mall anywhere in the country since the mid-2000s.
Saks Fifth Avenue, Macy's, and Dillard's anchored it.
Apple drew crowds in a market that had lacked that kind of access, alongside Anthropologie, H&M, Forever 21, Gap, lululemon, Sephora, Michael Kors, and dozens more.
The mall leaned into the service-minded design of its moment: free Wi-Fi, touchscreen directories, charging stations, valet parking, electric-vehicle charging, a visitor information center, and a children's play area.
Several restaurants opened onto outdoor patios, giving the place exterior life that older inward-facing malls never had.
Inside the Mall: Skylights, Fossil Stone, and Fountains
Two levels, linear corridors, circular courts, and large skylit spaces opened straight into the department stores.
Inside, the surfaces were wood, glass, metal, and fossil stone, with soft seating, glass elevators, and escalators between the floors.
The vaulted skylight runs the building's north-south spine, and its louvers were sized to the climate: smaller shades on the east, larger ones on the west to blunt the harder afternoon sun.
Outside, palm trees, hedges, vines, and fountains broke up the parking fields, and the lots slope toward entrances on both levels, so a shopper can walk straight into the upper or lower floor depending on where they leave the car.
The site holds 4,112 parking spaces, more than the 3,573 the code required, and no garage was ever built.
High-performance glazing, a white roof, LED lighting, drip irrigation, bioswales in the lots, and bike racks were part of the original build rather than later additions.
Saks Moves East: How the Anchors Reshaped Sarasota Retail
Saks Fifth Avenue did not just open at the new mall; it left Westfield Southgate to get there.
The new store ran to 80,000 square feet, more than double the old one, with expanded designer departments, the 10022-SHOE area, a men's department, private shopping, and Sophie's, a restaurant inside the store with an open kitchen, an outdoor terrace, and private dining.
Macy's arrived as a new regional store and closed its DeSoto Square location in Bradenton the same year. Dillard's opened its 180,000-square-foot anchor and stayed committed to the market.
Around the anchors, fashion and home tenants gave the mall a second identity: Crate & Barrel, Pottery Barn, and Williams-Sonoma for the home, Kate Spade and Brooks Brothers for apparel.
The restaurants did the heaviest lifting after dark. The Cheesecake Factory, The Capital Grille, Seasons 52, BRIO Tuscan Grille, and Kona Grill helped make the mall as much a dinner destination as a shopping destination.
From Taubman to Simon: A 2020 Closure and a Change of Hands
The corridors went quiet. The mall closed at the end of business on March 19, 2020, in the first wave of pandemic shutdowns.
When it reopened on May 6, only 35 of more than 130 stores were open, the play area was shut, seating was rearranged, sanitizer stations appeared, and the food court ran on modified procedures.
Stores returned in stages. The closure was disruptive, but it did not end the mall. The same year brought a quieter change.
On December 29, 2020, Simon Property Group completed its purchase of an 80% interest in Taubman Realty Group, with the Taubman family keeping 20%, which made Simon the successor to Taubman's role at the mall.
Benderson stayed exactly where it had always been, building out the district around it. The debt had already been refinanced back in 2016, once the mall settled from construction into steady operation.
The Mall at University Town Center Becomes One Piece of a Bigger District
The enclosed building never got torn down or rebuilt. Its two levels, three anchors, skylit corridor, and parking fields are the same shape they were on opening day. What changed is everything around it.
The mall was built to pull from a projected 616,000 people nearby and a wider 1.2 million beyond, much of it shoppers who had been driving to Tampa or Naples for upscale brands.
Benderson then added nearly 1 million square feet of retail and restaurant space after 2014, and the wider University Town Center district now runs past 4 million square feet, with more than 200 retailers and more than 80 places to eat across the mall and the districts beside it, plus more than 350 hotel rooms and more than 250,000 square feet of offices.
North Cattlemen Road became the spine, linking the older centers north of University Parkway to the mall on the south and the growing East District to the east.
In 2019, Sarasota County loosened the program to allow more office space in place of some retail and pushed full build-out to December 31, 2030.
The mall had been the destination. Now it was the core retail piece of a destination.
Traffic and the University Town Center Improvement District Debate
The complaint never really went away.
University Parkway was already a major route when the mall added a large new draw beside the interstate, and the mall opened before the interchange work that was supposed to handle it was finished, leaving shoppers and commuters to thread through construction.
A diverging-diamond interchange at I-75 and University Parkway became the fix tied to traffic from the mall, Lakewood Ranch, Nathan Benderson Park, and everything else still going up.
Today, the surface lots offer self-parking, valet, and EV charging, with ChargePoint stations on the west side and Electrify America stations on the east between Kona Grill and Macy's, plus Breeze bus service along the parkway.
The newest fight is bigger than the mall.
A 2026 proposal would create the University Town Center Improvement District across more than 1,500 acres in Sarasota and Manatee counties to fund stormwater, flood control, transportation, security, and maintenance, governed by a landowner-tied board with assessment and bonding power.
Supporters call it a way to pay for infrastructure a large district needs; critics question the oversight, the taxing authority, and a private developer's hand in a public district.
The Florida House approved a scaled-back version in March 2026.
The Mall at University Town Center in 2026: The Anchor That Stayed
In March 2026, Saks nearly became the mall's first empty anchor.
After its parent company's January bankruptcy filing, the 80,000-square-foot store at 120 University Town Center Drive landed on a closure list on March 6, with 66 jobs set to end in May, the only Florida Saks marked to go.
The affected staff ran from sales associates and beauty specialists to Fifth Avenue Club consultants and client-development managers.
Then, by March 25, it was off the list. A renegotiated lease with Simon kept the store open, and the mall held onto the three anchors it opened with.
The growth nearby has not slowed: Gorjana opened near Grand Court on July 1, 2025, and a 48,000-square-foot Ikea is planned a short way off at 147 North Cattlemen Road, between DSW and Golf Galaxy.
What is gone was mostly never built: the fourth anchor, the Nordstrom promised for 2010. What remains is the rest of it, more than 150 stores and restaurants under the same louvered skylight.
And before the stores open each morning, the walking club still loops the corridors past the sea-creature play area, doing what people have done here since the doors first opened in 2014.
