For thirty years, Hattiesburg has done its shopping in one place. Not exclusively, but reliably. The enclosed mall on the west side of the city has outlasted the department-store names on its anchor signs, the theater company that opened its nine screens, and the fast-food chain that moved on opening day.
Turtle Creek Mall opened in 1994 on Highway 98 West, built by a Chattanooga developer as part of one of the last waves of new enclosed regional malls in smaller American cities.
The specific things that made the place feel like itself in 1994 have mostly changed. Gayfers became McRae's became Belk. Luby's became Chuck E. Cheese. United Artists went dark, twice, before Southwest Theaters reopened the cinema in 2015.
Chick-fil-A, which had relocated from Hattiesburg's previous mall to Turtle Creek on opening day, finally left in 2023. What kept returning, through all of it, was the crowd.
Turtle Creek Mall Opens on Hattiesburg's West Side
On October 16, 1994, The Hattiesburg American ran a grand-opening supplement for Turtle Creek Mall.
The mall had opened earlier that month on the west side of the city, on a stretch of Highway 98 West that barely existed as a retail corridor a few years before.
Dillard's, Gayfers, and Goody's anchored the first phase. A nine-screen United Artists theater opened alongside them.
Chick-fil-A moved over from the older Cloverleaf Mall and set up in the food court. Luby's took a spot near the cinema.
Steak Escape, Corn Dog 7, and Dippin' Dots filled the inline bays. Electronics Boutique, Disc Jockey, and Reel Collections took up storefront space. Cyberstation handled the arcade traffic.
For anyone who had shopped at Cloverleaf near the Highway 49 and Highway 11 interchange, Hattiesburg's first regional mall, open since the mid-1970s, the new place on Highway 98 felt like a different scale entirely.
The developer was CBL & Associates Properties, a Chattanooga firm building enclosed malls in mid-sized markets across the South and Midwest.
Turtle Creek was developed through Turtle Creek Limited Partnership and fully owned by CBL from the start.
How Turtle Creek Mall Pulled Retail West
The older Hattiesburg mall was near an interchange that had been serving the city since the 1970s.
Cloverleaf had several anchor stores over time, including JCPenney, Sears, McRae's, and Waldoff's. By the early 1990s, Hattiesburg's business growth was moving west along Highway 98.
When Turtle Creek opened in 1994, that move sped up significantly. National stores and chain restaurants followed the new mall.
Hotels and service businesses opened nearby. The corridor became one of the busiest business areas in South Mississippi.
Cloverleaf never really got back its old role as an enclosed mall. In the years after Turtle Creek opened, Cloverleaf lost national stores to the new competition.
It later removed or changed its enclosed mall interior and became a mixed-use center with discount stores and office tenants.
The building stayed. Its original use did not. From the beginning, Turtle Creek reached beyond Hattiesburg.
The University of Southern Mississippi brought students, faculty, and visiting families into the market all year.
Camp Shelby, the major military training installation south of the city, brought personnel through the area regularly.
Two large hospitals made Hattiesburg a medical center for people from several counties. Nearby communities such as Petal, Laurel, and Columbia were close enough for shopping trips.
The mall pulled shoppers from across the Pine Belt, not just from the neighborhoods around it.
The Full Lineup: McRae's, JCPenney, and Sears Join in 1995
The 1995 expansion completed what CBL had originally planned. McRae's, JCPenney, and Sears joined the anchor lineup, pushing the property toward its eventual total of roughly 846,000 square feet of gross leasable area.
By late 1998, the mall listed six principal anchor names: JCPenney, Sears, McRae's I, Goody's, McRae's II, and Dillard's.
The two McRae's entries reflected the absorption of Gayfers into McRae's during late-1990s department-store consolidation; the two operations occupied what had originally been Gayfers and a separate expansion anchor space.
That year, the mall sat at 99 percent occupancy and was generating mall-store sales of roughly $292 per square foot.
By the mid-2000s, sales per square foot had climbed above $400. Occupancy had come off its late-1990s peak but held in the 90 percent range.
In June 2004, Chuck E. Cheese opened inside the mall in the former Luby's space, adding a family-entertainment draw that the food-court area had not previously included.
The cinema and the food court and the department stores still formed the backbone of the weekly routine for a large part of the Pine Belt: school-night movies, weekend shopping, the particular kind of mid-afternoon wandering that enclosed malls in smaller cities sustained for decades.
The McRae's-to-Belk Transition and a 2005 Renovation
In April 2005, Belk agreed to purchase 47 Proffitt's and McRae's stores from Saks Incorporated for $622 million. Both McRae's operations at Turtle Creek were part of the deal.
The conversions to Belk followed in 2006. By 2010, Belk had consolidated those two locations into a single anchor, leaving one former department-store box open for a different use.
Hurricane Katrina damaged the United Artists cinema that same year.
Turtle Creek 9 closed after the storm, reopened briefly under independent management, then closed again on October 26, 2007.
The mall entered the following years without a working theater.
Also in 2012, the mall completed a renovation that updated finishes, common areas, signage, and seating.
The food-court area, interior courts used for seasonal events like Santa and Easter Bunny photos, and the long enclosed concourses all remained in place.
The Anchor Losses: Goody's, Sears, and Stein Mart
Goody's, one of the original 1994 anchors, closed during the chain's late-2000s national decline in 2009.
The space sat vacant before Stein Mart relocated its Hattiesburg store to Turtle Creek in October 2011, taking up the former anchor position.
It drew consistent traffic through the decade. Sears had been part of the mall since the 1995 expansion.
On May 31, 2018, Sears Holdings named the Turtle Creek location on a national list of store closures. Liquidation sales began in June.
The store closed by September. The former building, two stories totaling 134,200 square feet on 8 acres, with 685 feet of Highway 98 frontage and 651 parking spaces, was subsequently listed for lease at NNN terms.
As of April 2026, both floors of 67,100 square feet each remained available. No tenant has been confirmed.
The listing describes immediate availability and B-5 regional business zoning, leaving sale, lease, or repositioning all on the table.
Stein Mart filed for bankruptcy in August 2020 and began closing all stores. Urban Planet later took over that anchor space and is now listed among the mall's current tenants.
The Goody's box had been dark for two years before Stein Mart arrived; the Stein Mart box sat dark for about two years before Urban Planet moved in.
The Cinema's Eight-Year Gap: Southwest Theaters Reopens in 2015
United Artists had operated Turtle Creek 9 since opening day in October 1994. Nine screens, first-run films, a standard multiplex inside a regional mall.
Katrina damage closed it in 2005. After a period under independent management, it closed again on October 26, 2007, and sat dark for eight years.
The cinema had been central enough to the property's identity that its absence reshaped what an evening at Turtle Creek could look like: the theater trip that paired naturally with a meal, a stop at the food court, a late browse through the concourse.
Southwest Theaters reopened Turtle Creek 9 on December 23, 2015, with recliner-style seating across all nine screens and a continuing first-run format.
The current configuration holds 1,790 seats. Southwest Theaters - Turtle Creek 9 is now listed among the mall's anchor tenants.
The reopening also coincided with the arrival of Cinnabon, which opened on July 3, 2015, and held a formal grand-opening event in August.
Its owner, John Wells, opened the first Cinnabon location in Mississippi.
Garden Ridge Becomes At Home, and the Home-Decor Anchor Holds
One former department-store space became Garden Ridge, a big home-decor store with a self-service warehouse setup.
It used a large anchor space that had once been meant for a department store. In 2014, Garden Ridge began changing its stores across the chain.
The company redesigned stores, updated what it sold and how it displayed goods, added new signs, and relaunched as At Home.
The Turtle Creek store made that change and now operates as At Home, one of the mall's listed anchors.
At Turtle Creek, the change worked and lasted. Sears and Stein Mart closed in other parts of the property, leaving two anchor spaces dark.
The converted home-decor space kept operating.
At Turtle Creek, turning a traditional department-store box into a large specialty store lasted longer than the off-price and clothing anchors that replaced Goody's and later closed too.
On the food side, a similarly long-running tenant did not last. Chick-fil-A had moved from Cloverleaf to Turtle Creek when the mall opened in 1994.
In 2023, it closed its mall restaurant after nearly 30 years and was replaced by Off the Hook.
A tenant that had been part of Turtle Creek from the beginning was gone.
Turtle Creek Mall Today: 3.4 Million Visits and an Empty Sears Box Turtle
Creek Mall receives an estimated 3.4 million visits each year. The property lists 75 stores and more than 80 specialty shops and eateries.
Its anchor tenants are Belk, Dillard's, JCPenney, At Home, Urban Planet, and Southwest Theaters.
Its specialty tenants include Ulta Beauty, Chuck E. Cheese, Victoria's Secret/PINK, American Eagle, Buckle, and Bath & Body Works.
The food court includes Auntie Anne's, Cinnabon, Charley's Philly Steaks, McAlister's Deli, and additional food operators.
The mall serves a trade area estimated at 174,300 residents for 2025. Hattiesburg also draws people into the city during the day for employment, medical care, and university-related activity.
That daytime movement raises the typical weekday population figure to 231,800.
In 2019, general manager Stacy Woodard stated that the mall employed more than 2,000 people and ranked among Hattiesburg's top five contributors of sales-tax revenue.
The former Sears building is the property's most important vacant anchor space. The building sits on 8 acres with direct frontage on Highway 98.
It has two floors available for use and a separate parking field. The space is listed for lease and remains empty.
Its future use will have a major effect on the mall's next stage because no other single vacancy carries the same size, location, and visibility.
The rest of Turtle Creek Mall remains open, and the crowd that has returned through every anchor change since October 1994 still comes.
