The Mall in Columbia and the Planned City
When James Rouse dedicated Wilde Lake village in 1967, he was not simply carving cul-de-sacs into former farmland. He was staging an argument against the American city as it then existed - segregated, haphazard, and short on charm.
Columbia, Maryland, would be different: a complete, self-sustaining city, respectful of the land, nurturing to its people, and, ideally, profitable. At the heart of this experiment, he placed not a courthouse or a church, but a mall.
Work on The Mall in Columbia began in 1970 on a 170-acre site about 21 miles southwest of downtown Baltimore, right between Baltimore and Washington.
Howard Research & Development, a partnership between the Rouse Company and Connecticut General Life Insurance Company, managed the construction.
Rouse briefly hired Frank Gehry to design a mall next to the Columbia exhibit building, but thought he was too new to the field and chose Cope, Linder & Walmsley instead.
They designed a two-story interior paved in brick and washed with natural light from large skylights.
Later renovations would replace the brick with French limestone and add the mall's distinctive upside-down pyramid light fixtures.
On August 1, 1971, residents were invited to Howard County Day at the Mall, a dry run for their indoor downtown.
The official opening came on August 2, unveiling 640,000 leasable square feet and a small retail coup: Hochschild-Kohn of Baltimore and Woodward & Lothrop of Washington, D.C., sharing a roof for the first time, backed by McCrory's 5 & 10, Lerner Shops, and almost a hundred specialty stores.
Of that founding lineup, only GNC still stands.
Traditions, Expansions, and Storms at The Mall in Columbia
From the beginning, the mall was meant to be more than just a place to shop; it was Colombia's living room.
The first group of stores showed what the 1970s middle class wanted: Fashion Bug and Peck & Peck, Hyatts For Men and Florsheim Shoes, Capitol Stationers and National Photo, Kinney Shoes, Barbys Fabrics, Fredericks of Hollywood, Hook, Braid & Needle, Nick Nack Nosh Nook, Harmony Hut Records & Tapes, Bailey, Banks & Biddle, Chess King, and many others.
The place quickly started creating traditions. On June 17, 1972, the first Ball in the Mall turned the floor into a dance floor.
That same year, the Poinsettia Tree appeared, a tall display of blooming plants that became a Christmas tradition in Colombia. The building also served as a cultural center.
In 1976, the Rouse Company worked with the Baltimore Museum of Art to show different exhibits, and King Gustaf of Sweden visited the new town and its air-conditioned downtown.
In 1977, Columbia's 10th Birthday Celebration included a federal Housing and Urban Development exhibit about new communities, set up not in Washington but between the stores.
Meanwhile, stores changed. Hochschild-Kohn closed in February 1975 and reopened as Hechts on September 1. In 1979, WLMD radio opened a studio in the mall.
On August 6, 1981, a new Southwest Wing opened, adding a two-story Sears, about 70 new stores, and a second food court called Pic Nic; Sears opened on August 13.
The mall was now huge, covering a million square feet. In 1983, a snowstorm trapped shoppers and workers overnight.
In 1987, Columbia's 20th Birthday brought another Ball in the Mall, and in 1989, a carousel finally gave children something to ride.
Lord & Taylor, Nordstrom, and the Plaza Years
The 1990s opened with the slow fading of old five-and-dime comforts. McCrory's 5 & 10 closed in January 1995, taking its luncheonette with it.
Woodward & Lothrop, one of the original prestige anchors, shut down on November 10, 1995.
On July 20, 1996, JCPenney moved into that space, less glamorous but more in tune with the way most people actually shopped.
At the same time, the mall was growing. Hecht's added a third floor during 1996 and 1997, and the inside got new French limestone, more pyramid-shaped lights, more places to sit, and new signs.
A 150 million dollar expansion began by knocking down an east-side parking garage on July 28, 1997, and full building work started in March 1998.
On November 3, 1998, a two-level Lord & Taylor opened next to new parking garages.
A Northwest Wing was built nearby, with about forty small stores in a row and a two-level Nordstrom, which opened on September 17, 1999.
The mall's two food courts were combined into one larger area on the lower level of the Sears wing, and a third parking deck was added.
The renewed Pic Nic food court opened on November 15, 2000.
In March 2001, a separate 30,000 square foot L.L. Bean opened in a new Plaza at The Mall in the northwest parking lot.
This was only the Maine company's third real store. P.F. Changs China Bistro opened in May 2001.
On December 17, 2003, the American Multi-Cinema Columbia 14 started showing movies, turning the mall into a regional place for fun with about 1.43 million square feet and around 220 stores and businesses.
From Rouse to Brookfield: Anchors Shrink, Plazas Grow
By the mid-2000s, Rouse's experiment had been absorbed into the national mall economy.
In November 2004, General Growth Properties bought the Rouse Company and with it The Mall in Columbia. Late 2005 brought The Cheesecake Factory near the theater.
On September 9, 2006, Hecht's was rebadged as Macy's, one more step in the chain-store consolidation that made malls from Maryland to California look like copies of each other.
In 2007, management tried to retire the Poinsettia Tree, announcing that the elaborate display would not return.
Columbia objected. Several hundred residents organized, the story reached Washington, and by 2008, the tree was back in place.
The planned community had discovered it could push back.
L.L. Bean closed in May 2013. That year, construction began on the Plaza at The Mall in Columbia to replace it.
The first phase opened in November 2013, with tenants such as Soma Intimates, Arhaus Furniture, Athleta, and an AT&T Mobility store.
By 2014, the open-air section was complete, and Maggiano's Little Italy, Seasons 52, and Zoe's Kitchen lined a new pedestrian streetscape bolted onto the side of the old inward-facing box.
Meanwhile, the classic anchors were thinning out. In 2010, Brookfield Property Partners bought a stake in General Growth and took full ownership in August 2018, folding The Mall in Columbia into its portfolio.
In 2017, Sears shrank to its 62,000 square foot lower level while the upper floor was carved up for a 50,000 square foot Main Event Entertainment Center, a Barnes & Noble, and Uncle Julios; the center court fountain quietly vanished.
Main Event opened on May 8, 2018; Barnes & Noble followed on September 19. On December 31, 2018, another chapter of suburban retail closed as Sears left for good.
Shootings and a Guarded Commons
The mall's carefully controlled environment did not keep out the country's more dangerous habits.
On January 25, 2014, a 19-year-old gunman entered a skate and streetwear shop on the second floor, killed two employees, wounded others, then killed himself; police arrived within minutes and disabled crude explosives left behind.
In March 2015, a former correctional officer was arrested after a series of shootings, and county police soon announced an increased presence at village centers and malls, The Mall in Columbia among them.
Nearly a decade later, the violence returned at closer range.
On July 27, 2024, a 17-year-old was shot and killed in the food court in what authorities described as a targeted attack, the gunman following the victim from the seating area toward a restroom and firing once from behind.
After ten months of reviewing video, investigators arrested an 18-year-old suspect in another state in May 2025.
February 2025 added another grim entry.
Near the Lidl bus loop on February 22, gunfire killed a 16-year-old and mortally wounded a 15-year-old, who died days later; investigators say an 18-year-old, then on GPS-monitored home detention, was tied to the killings when ankle-monitor data placed him at the mall.
In April 2025, county leaders announced a police unit and satellite office there.
Playseum, Lidl, and the New Mall Day-to-Day
Even so, on most days, The Mall in Columbia behaves exactly as Rouse intended: people come and go, meet for lunch, and navigate their errands under a neutral sky of drywall and glass.
In 2019, the food court fountain was drained and filled with plants, and a glass elevator was added outside Main Event.
On December 29, 2020, Lord & Taylor closed because of the pandemic, and the chain left its physical stores.
On June 9, 2021, the old Sears lower level reopened as a 26,000 square foot Lidl, a German discount grocery store where clothes and home goods used to be sold.
Now the focus is on entertainment and food.
Main Event's bowling lanes and virtual-reality games, AMC Columbia 14's movie screens, and restaurants like P.F. Changs, Maggiano's Little Italy, The Cheesecake Factory, and the Marketplace Cafe inside Nordstrom give people reasons to visit a place that no longer has a department store on every corner.
A new family spot, the Playseum, tries to attract future customers: more than twenty themed Cityshops let children kayak on a small Chesapeake Bay, dress up as Maryland heroes, work in a toy hospital, search through Grandma's Attic, or meet live animals in a Pet Shop.
Rouse's Long Bet on Downtown
As of 2025, the mall offers roughly 1.4 million square feet of space over two levels, with three levels inside Macy's, and about 7,200 parking spaces in surface lots and three garages. Public transit arrives via RTA Central Maryland routes.
The Mall in Columbia's current anchors include AMC Theatres, Lidl, Main Event Entertainment, Barnes & Noble, JCPenney, Macy's, and Nordstrom, supported by more than 200 specialty stores and restaurants, among them newer arrivals like Warby Parker, Under Armour, Uniqlo, Claire's, Kendra Scott, and Toys R Us.
Rouse promised that Columbia would respect the land, grow its people, and still make money.
The Mall in Columbia now covers former farmland in concrete, gathers residents for balls, blizzards, protests, and police briefings, and continues to turn rent into returns.
It is, in other words, exactly the kind of American downtown James Rouse predicted: privately owned, carefully curated, permanently busy, and considerably less innocent than it looked on opening day.
