North Shore Square is a largely closed regional shopping center at 150 Northshore Boulevard in Slidell, Louisiana, in eastern St. Tammany Parish, north of New Orleans.
The property sits near Interstate 12, Northshore Boulevard, Airport Road, and U.S. Highway 190, within one of Slidell's most visible retail corridors.
It was built as a major enclosed retail hub for Slidell, eastern St. Tammany Parish, Washington Parish, Hancock County, Pearl River County, and nearby communities.
Opened in 1985, North Shore Square became Slidell's first major regional mall and the only regional mall in its trade area before its later decline.
North Shore Square Opened Beside Slidell's Fast Roads
Cars left Interstate 12 and rolled toward a new mall at 150 Northshore Boulevard, where one floor held department stores, food counters, fountains, common areas, and enough parking to make the place feel built for whole parishes at once.
North Shore Square opened in 1985 in Slidell, about 40 miles north of New Orleans.
Homart Development Company built the mall during the strongest years of enclosed regional shopping centers. Homart was tied to Sears and developed malls across the United States.
North Shore Square had about 621,000 square feet and served eastern St. Tammany Parish, Washington Parish, Hancock County, Pearl River County, and nearby communities in Louisiana and Mississippi.
The mall was marketed as the only regional mall in its trade area.
Shoppers parked once, entered a climate-controlled corridor, and moved among department stores, smaller shops, snack counters, and interior gathering spaces.
The original construction, operation, and reciprocal easement agreement was dated June 17, 1985.
In 1986, Slidell annexed and zoned mall-related land connected to Homart. The zoning was C-6 Regional Shopping Center District.
North Shore Square Became Slidell's Retail Centerpiece
North Shore Square gave Slidell a regional shopping center with the full enclosed-mall formula: anchors at the ends, smaller stores along the corridors, food in the middle, and a climate-controlled place for people to spend hours without leaving the building.
Sears, JCPenney, D. H. Holmes, Maison Blanche, Dillard's, Mervyn's, Burlington Coat Factory, Conn's HomePlus, At Home, and later Extra Space Storage all became part of the property's tenant history.
D. H. Holmes was later connected to one Dillard's space. Maison Blanche was later connected to the second Dillard's space. The D. H. Holmes past remained visible in architectural details at one entrance.
Inside, the mall carried the everyday life of regional retail. Food-court and snack names included Chick-fil-A, Arby's, Subway, Auntie Anne's, Corn Dog 7, Mrs. Fields, and other quick-service operators.
The arcade was Pocket Change.
By 2014, the operating anchors included JCPenney, Dillard's Men's Store, Dillard's Women's Store, and Burlington Coat Factory. Sears had recently closed.
Katrina Left the Mall Open as Retail Habits Shifted
Hurricane Katrina reshaped the New Orleans region in 2005, but North Shore Square stayed open after the storm.
The mall avoided the severe flood damage that destroyed or badly damaged many properties farther south.
After Katrina, more people and businesses moved and rebuilt on the Northshore. Slidell still had plenty of shoppers. The bigger issue was how retail around the mall was changing.
More retailers wanted stores that were easy to see from the highway, outdoor shopping centers, and separate buildings.
Enclosed malls relied on major department stores to bring people inside and move them through the hallways.
As those department stores became weaker, the smaller stores near them got fewer shoppers.
North Shore Square still looked and felt like a traditional mall into the mid-2010s. It still had retro storefronts, department-store courts, fountains near the JCPenney wing, and activity in the food court.
The property still had good road access, utilities, stormwater systems, and visibility.
The nearby intersection had more than 1.7 million square feet of retail space. Traffic near the mall was more than 94,000 vehicles per day.
Fremaux Town Center Pulled Slidell Retail Into Open Air
Fremaux Town Center opened near North Shore Square in 2014 and gave Slidell the newer kind of shopping center that more national chains wanted.
Its first phase included Kohl's, Dick's Sporting Goods, Best Buy, T.J. Maxx, Michaels, PetSmart, Panera Bread, Cheddar's, LongHorn Steakhouse, and other places that drew shoppers on their own.
This open-air setup worked differently from North Shore Square. Stores faced roads and parking lots. Restaurants had their own street presence.
Large stores could be built for the current retailer's needs instead of being placed inside older mall spaces.
North Shore Square was under pressure from several sides at the same time. Department stores were shrinking, which cut anchor traffic.
Online shopping changed how people buy things. Nearby big-box stores pulled customers away.
National chains became less interested in enclosed mall hallways.
JCPenney put the North Shore Square store on its 2017 national closure list.
The Slidell store was one of three Louisiana locations named in that round. Sears had already closed as part of the wider decline in department stores.
With the anchors gone, fewer people walked through the mall. Smaller inline spaces became harder to lease. Large department-store spaces became harder to fill with traditional mall tenants.
The Enclosed Interior Closed in July 2019
The enclosed interior mall closed in July 2019. The old regional mall function ended there, even though parts of the property continued to operate from exterior-access spaces.
At Home later occupied the former Sears space. Dillard's continued as a clearance center.
Conn's HomePlus became one of the last large-format tenants at the property. These stores no longer depended on the interior mall corridor.
The closure was tied to a plan to move the site away from the enclosed-mall model and toward open-air retail, big-box reuse, outparcels, or broader redevelopment.
That change did not happen quickly. The property stayed mostly vacant for years after the interior closed.
The center still had one floor, about 40 stores, about 170,500 square feet of smaller shop space, and about 3,140 parking stalls.
Other commercial material placed the broader center on a larger land area with thousands of parking spaces.
Later redevelopment work focused on about 54 acres, then used a 41-acre assumption after key ownership changes.
Storage Filled Space That Stores Could Not Refill
The old Dillard's area on the back side of North Shore Square no longer had to pretend it was waiting for another department store.
By 2020, that part of 150 Northshore Boulevard had a different use in front of Slidell: miniwarehouse space.
Star Slidell LLC brought the request. Slidell approved the conditional-use permit. The space later operated as Extra Space Storage, with climate-controlled units, first-floor units, indoor units, and drive-up storage.
It was not the kind of reuse people remembered from the mall's busiest years. No fountain pulled anyone down the corridor.
No arcade noise carried across the common area. No food-court line fed traffic to the nearby stores.
The numbers were still useful. The building still had floor area, access, utilities, and a large box that could be divided into rentable units.
The problem was not the shell. The problem was the old retail model inside it.
A department store needed crowds. Smaller mall stores needed a department store to bring those crowds. Storage needed neither.
It turned an empty anchor space into a working business after the mall corridor had already gone quiet.
Slidell's Tax District Put Money Behind Redevelopment
The tax district was created first. The rescue plan arrived years later.
Slidell created the Northshore Square Economic Development District in 2014, five years before the enclosed interior of the mall closed.
Its 0.5 percent sales and use tax started in 2015.
By June 30, 2023, the district had about $200,000 in restricted fund balance. Sales and use tax revenue that year was about $110,500.
That amount was small compared with the scale of 150 Northshore Boulevard.
North Shore Square was still a 621,000-square-foot property with aging anchor buildings, large parking areas, existing roads, utilities, stormwater systems, and a location near Interstate 12.
In 2025, Slidell expanded the district boundaries. The district's local tax rate later went up, giving the mall area a higher total sales-tax rate than the regular Slidell rate.
Then the city made a bigger move. In September 2025, Slidell moved toward buying the blighted mall property for slightly more than $12 million.
The bond authorization was nearly $28 million. The financing plan included a 1 percent sales-tax increase in the mall area.
The numbers made the mall's future a public risk issue for residents.
The debate involved the price, the appraisal information, the tax burden, and whether Slidell should take on a property that private retail had already failed to refill.
Acquistapace Parcels Changed the 2026 Picture
By early 2026, two former anchor parcels were in new hands.
Members of the Acquistapace grocery family acquired the former JCPenney parcel, about 85,000 square feet, and the former Conn's HomePlus site, about 75,000 square feet.
Their plans included moving Acquistapace Wine Warehouse to the mall property and developing a grocery-related use. The first phase was targeted for later in 2026.
The purchases changed how the larger site could move forward. Earlier public planning had looked at redevelopment as a more unified project.
Separate private control of important anchor parcels made a phased future more likely, with different owners involved in different parts of the property.
Conn's HomePlus entered bankruptcy in 2024 and began closing all stores. The Slidell store at North Shore Square went into liquidation with closing discounts.
After that exit, At Home and Dillard's Clearance Center were left as the two main active retail anchors.
As of April 25, 2026, the enclosed interior mall was closed. Active or publicly listed uses included At Home, Dillard's Clearance Center, Extra Space Storage, and redevelopment activity tied to former anchor parcels.
Event Center, Logistics, and Manufacturing Compete for Space
A major redevelopment framework was finished in late 2025 and released in January 2026. It looked at North Shore Square as a site for economic development, not simply as a failed retail center.
The planning process included 34 interviewees, 13 sectors, and more than 300 hours of discussion.
Those involved included local government leaders, business groups, tourism representatives, state economic-development interests, health-care institutions, education institutions, ports and logistics interests, industrial users, real estate professionals, utilities, and the mall owner.
The ideas covered a wide range of possible uses.
They included an event center, a distribution and logistics center, warehousing and storage, a health-care campus, light manufacturing, art and film space, post-secondary education space, cold storage, a data center, an indoor waterpark or other entertainment use, an outdoor sports campus, and a logistics plus retail hub.
The event-center idea had the strongest support in the community. It called for about 200,000 square feet, a peak height of about 100 feet, and roughly 2,000 parking spaces.
The estimated construction cost was about $130 million to $254 million.
The logistics concept called for about 440,000 square feet, about 320 parking stalls, and about 24 loading docks. The light-manufacturing concept used a similar building size and offered better potential for direct jobs.
Notable Milestones
1985 - North Shore Square opened in Slidell as a regional enclosed mall developed by Homart Development Company.
June 17, 1985 - The mall's construction, operation, and reciprocal easement agreement were dated.
1986 - Slidell annexed and zoned mall-related property tied to Homart and the North Shore Square development.
1986 - A D. H. Holmes-related parcel at Highway 190 West, Airport Road, and I-12 was petitioned for annexation and C-6 regional shopping-center zoning.
2005 - Hurricane Katrina did not destroy the mall, and the property continued operating after the storm.
2014 - Fremaux Town Center opened nearby and pulled Slidell retail toward newer open-air and big-box formats.
2014 - The Northshore Square Economic Development District was created.
2015 - The Northshore Square EDD's 0.5 percent sales and use tax began.
2017 - JCPenney included the North Shore Square store in its national closure plan.
July 2019 - The enclosed interior mall closed.
2020 - Slidell approved mini-warehouse use in the former mall anchor space.
2023 - The Northshore Square EDD had about $200,000 in restricted fund balance at fiscal year end.
2024 - Conn's HomePlus entered bankruptcy liquidation, and the North Shore Square store began closing.
2025 - Slidell expanded the Northshore Square EDD boundaries.
September 2025 - Slidell moved toward buying the mall property for slightly more than $12 million.
Late 2025 - A redevelopment framework narrowed the site's main reuse options.
January 2026 - Redevelopment findings were publicly released.
Early 2026 - Members of the Acquistapace grocery family acquired the former JCPenney and Conn's anchor parcels.
April 2026 - The enclosed mall remained closed while At Home, Dillard's Clearance Center, Extra Space Storage, and redevelopment activity continued.
