Standing on Bonita Lakes Circle in Meridian, Mississippi, sits a one-level enclosed mall built on land leased from the county schools. It opened in October 1997 as Bonita Lakes Mall, with Dillard's, JCPenney, Goody's, and Sears among its early anchors.
McRae's was there by 2000. Belk bought McRae's in 2005, and the store became Belk in 2006. RockStep Capital bought the mall in 2016 and renamed it Uptown Meridian in 2020.
JCPenney closed in September 2017. Sears was empty by early 2019. A furniture retailer and an indoor go-kart center took over the JCPenney and Sears spaces. A gym filled the old Goody's.
Today the mall is open seven days a week, closing at 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 6 p.m. Sunday. Belk and Dillard's still trade there. The nearest competing enclosed mall is 90 miles away.
The school land that became Bonita Lakes Mall
In 1993, the ground on the east side of Meridian, Mississippi, that would hold the city's next mall belonged to the public schools.
It was sixteenth-section land, held in trust by the Lauderdale County Board of Education, and state law requires school authorities to get fair money when they lease it out.
John Ed Ainsworth negotiated for the board. Developers Hardy Graham and Ed Johnson sat on the other side of it.
Two adjoining tracts were on the table, and the appraisals split them hard.
Appraiser Alex Smith valued the larger piece, about 120 acres, at $2,200 an acre that September.
Nine days later he put the neighboring 40 acres at $15,000 an acre, because that one was flat and had road frontage.
By May 1995, a combined appraisal put 159.85 acres at $730,000.
Ainsworth wanted 9 percent of that as annual rent, $65,700, and on June 12, 1995, the developers' companies signed two 40-year leases.
The old mall's owner fought it in court
On September 13, 1995, the two development companies asked Lauderdale County Chancery Court to confirm those leases. Paul Broadhead objected.
He owned Village Fair Mall, the enclosed center already running in Meridian, and a second mall out by the interstate would compete for the same tenants.
Morris Nicholson joined him.
The challenge came down to money and duty: the rent was too low, the appraisals weren't competent, the appraiser held an interest in another lease inside the same sixteenth section, and the appraisals had left out the value of the public road work tied to the project.
The chancery court confirmed the leases on May 10, 1996.
The Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed on October 23, 1997, eight days after the mall had already opened its doors.
The road improvements were contingent on the mall being built, the court held, so leaving them out of the land value was fine.
Four department stores and 631,500 square feet
Bonita Lakes Mall opened in October 1997 at 1210 Bonita Lakes Circle, a one-level enclosed regional shopping center a few minutes from where Interstate 20 meets Interstate 59.
One long concourse, department-store blocks around the outside edges, small stores facing in, parking fields on every side.
Dillard's, JCPenney, McRae's, and Sears took the anchor ends.
Goody's came in as a junior anchor, and a United Artists theater, the Bonita Lakes 9, was attached to the building. The project cost $85 million.
Chic Wigs got an unfinished shell and had to finish the space itself.
After more than 25 years at Village Fair, it hired a contractor for $44,000 and had moved in by October 15.
The mall was still filling in. By the end of 1998, mall-store space was 86 percent leased, with sales of $252 per square foot.
Village Fair emptied and the names kept changing
Village Fair closed soon after Bonita Lakes started operating.
The old mall then sat vacant for years, and demolition work didn't clear the site until 2020.
The new center filled in. By 2002, 98 percent of the mall-store space was leased, and sales reached $280 per square foot by 2006.
The signs changed before the buildings did.
Belk bought 25 McRae's stores in July 2005, and the Meridian anchor swapped one name for the other without moving a wall.
Then the recession arrived.
Sales dropped from $280 to $242 per square foot by the end of 2008 and leasing fell to 94 percent, while Goody's disappeared from the anchor list as the chain came apart.
Trade recovered for a while, to $289 per square foot and 97 percent leasing in 2013, before leasing slid to 88 percent in 2015.
Sold for a third of what it cost to build
In the first quarter of 2016, CBL wrote down Bonita Lakes Mall and the shopping center beside it by $5.3 million, cutting a carrying value of $33.3 million to about what a buyer was ready to pay.
That buyer was RockStep Capital of Houston, working with 16 local investors.
The deal closed on May 12, 2016, at $27.9 million for both properties, against the $85 million the mall alone had cost to build.
The two figures don't measure the same thing. One covers new construction; the other covers an aging leasehold with vacancies in it.
Between them, the two properties had been producing 0.7 percent of CBL's revenue.
RockStep started on signs, security, and theater upgrades, and went looking for tenants that weren't department stores.
JCPenney left, Sears left, go-karts moved in
On March 17, 2017, the Meridian JCPenney appeared on a list of 138 stores the chain planned to close.
Closing-store traffic ran ahead of expectations, so liquidation slipped to May 22, and the store finally shut on September 17 after almost 20 years.
While that was happening, a Hattiesburg businessman was building out the old Goody's space as his sixth and largest Fitness Depot, with a walking track, circuit-training equipment, and a coffee and juice bar.
Sears went onto a closing list on November 8, 2018, four weeks after its parent filed for bankruptcy, and the store was empty by early 2019.
It stayed empty for months.
In July 2019, RockStep announced HYPE Indoor Adventures for the building: 93,000 square feet of former department store rebuilt for indoor go-karts, trampolines, climbing walls, and axe throwing, with more than 50 jobs attached.
Uptown Meridian, and who still shows up
The mall reopened on May 1, 2020, through one entrance, the one facing the interstate.
Masks were required, 65 customers were allowed inside at a time, groups were capped at five, food-court seating stayed closed, and anyone 18 or younger had to come with a parent.
Most tenants came back. By July 7, 98 percent of the stores were open again.
Victoria's Secret, there since the 1997 opening, was one that didn't return.
On July 22, RockStep renamed the property Uptown Meridian. Around town people still say Bonita Lakes, and so do the street signs.
HYPE opened on September 25. Golden Ticket Cinemas opened the rebuilt theater in the last week of December, with electric recliners.
Belk and Dillard's are still trading, in two of the four department-store spaces that opened the place.
Woodstock sells furniture in the JCPenney building, Fitness Depot has the Goody's space, and a police substation sits inside.
Walkers come in before the stores open at 10 a.m., where 2.4 laps of the concourse make a mile. The nearest other enclosed mall is 90 miles away.
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