SouthPark grows from three department stores to five
On February 12, 1970, Belk and Ivey's opened their doors on what had been pasture at Sharon and Fairview roads, about six miles south of Uptown Charlotte, North Carolina.
Sears joined them that August. The three department stores anchored SouthPark, an enclosed mall the Belk and Ivey families had planned during the 1960s on land that was suburban at the time.
Offices, apartments, and more shops followed, and a whole business district grew up around the mall.
The building kept growing along with it. A fourth wing was added in 1988, and Thalhimers and then Hecht's traded in it.
In 2002 Simon Property Group bought SouthPark in the middle of a roughly $100 million redevelopment: a parking garage, a new front entrance lined with restaurants, a bigger Hecht's, and a 144,000-square-foot Nordstrom.
When that work was done, a mall built around three department stores had room for more.
SouthPark now has five department stores where its original lineup had three.
Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus trade beside Macy's, which holds the 1988 wing, and a string of luxury labels has its own shops along the corridors.
Of the three original department stores, Belk is the one still trading there.
Northlake Mall passes to a new owner
North Mecklenburg was growing fast when a new enclosed mall was planned for the interchange of I-77 and I-485, close enough to pull shoppers from Huntersville, Davidson, Cornelius, and the towns around Lake Norman.
Taubman opened Northlake Mall in Charlotte, North Carolina, on September 15, 2005, with Belk, Dillard's, Hecht's, and Dick's Sporting Goods.
A 14-screen AMC theater followed on December 14. Hecht's later became Macy's, after the two chains' parent companies merged.
Starwood Capital Group paid $248 million for Northlake in 2014.
The debt on the property went unpaid, and in 2021 the mall was put into receivership.
A court later approved its sale to Hull Property Group, which completed the purchase in March 2025 for $39 million.
The company already owned Carolina Mall in Concord.
Belk spent those same years reworking its two-level store.
In September 2024 the upper floor became a Belk Outlet, and in August 2026 Belk turned that floor into Belk Market.
Under Hull, Macy's still anchors the mall, and the AMC that followed that December is still showing films.
Belk now runs both floors of its store, a regular Belk below and Belk Market above.
Carolina Place loses Sears and Macy's
Five department stores once anchored Carolina Place: Dillard's, Belk, Macy's, Sears, and JCPenney.
The two-level enclosed mall, about 1.2 million square feet, was built in 1991 in Pineville, North Carolina, less than a mile from the Charlotte line near I-485, with I-77 close by.
SouthPark stood about five miles away, and the two malls competed for shoppers on that side of the city.
Carolina Place grew again in 2006. A roughly $24 million project created a lifestyle section and overhauled the food court.
The department stores thinned out in the years that followed. Sears closed its store in 2018, and Macy's left the lineup as well.
The mall's $149 million loan came due in June 2023, and its owner, part of the Brookfield group, did not pay it off.
The owner and the loan's servicer began talks on new terms.
Carolina Place stayed open through all of it.
Its lifestyle area holds REI, and the mall keeps set hours for walkers who come to cover the corridors on foot.
Belk, Dillard's, and JCPenney, three of the five department stores the mall once had, still anchor its two levels.
Concord Mills keeps its outlets and attractions
A 24-screen movie theater opened with Concord Mills on September 17, 1999, and so did more than 200 stores.
The enclosed mall in Concord, North Carolina, went up just off I-85 north of Charlotte as a Mills-style center, built around outlet and value stores and big-format retailers, with entertainment under the same roof.
That mix held through a renovation, from 2016 to 2021, of a building that covers more than 1.3 million square feet.
Simon Property Group, the name shoppers see on the mall today, runs Concord Mills and holds the majority stake, with KanAm Grund Group as its partner.
After the work, factory stores of clothing, shoe, and handbag brands still line the corridors, and Bass Pro Shops is among the large-format tenants.
The attractions sit in and around the mall, in the part of Concord along I-85 that draws visitors for tourism and entertainment.
The mall has the SEA LIFE Aquarium and The Speedpark, and the AMC theater it opened with is still running.
A visitor can see the aquarium, catch a film on one of its 24 screens, and shop the outlet stores without walking back out to the parking lot.
Carolina Mall loses Sears and its cinema
Carolina Mall sits on Concord Parkway North, in one of the city's older retail corridors, about ten miles from Concord Mills.
It opened in Concord, North Carolina, in the early 1970s as an enclosed mall, with Sears among its original stores.
JCPenney joined it in 1987.
The outlet mall that came to I-85 in 1999 was built on another scale.
Carolina Mall covers about 550,000 square feet, and Concord Mills more than 1.3 million.
Carolina Mall was the department-store mall for Concord and Cabarrus County.
In 2012, with Belk, JCPenney, and Sears all in place, nearly every space in the mall was leased.
By 2022 about 70 percent was, leaving close to a third of the mall without tenants.
Sears is gone from the lineup.
Belk and JCPenney still anchor it for Hull Property Group, the company that also bought Northlake Mall in 2025.
Staples is among the anchors as well, and Xtreme Play, a recreation business, sits alongside national chains and local shops.
Carolina Mall Cinema 8, on its own lot beside the mall, has been closed since September 28, 2026.
Belk Outlet comes to Eastridge Mall
Belk, JCPenney, and Ivey's were Eastridge Mall's department stores when it opened in Gastonia, North Carolina, in 1976.
The mall had been built where a dairy farm once stood. The lineup turned over through the decades that followed.
Sears traded at the mall from 1998 to 2014, JCPenney closed in 2017, and Dillard's took over from Ivey's.
The building runs to about 920,000 square feet over three floors, and in February 2024 the top floor stood vacant.
That month the mall's management set out a plan to bring its first-floor shops up to the second level and hold the first floor for possible uses other than retail.
On its own first floor, Belk went the other direction.
In February 2025 the company announced that the lower level of its Eastridge store would turn into a Belk Outlet, and the outlet opened on April 30, 2025, with the traditional Belk still trading on the floor above.
Eastridge is still an enclosed mall, with Belk, its outlet, Dillard's, and Curt's Premium Outlet among its anchors and local shops along the corridors.
A state DMV office sits in its food court, and a U.S. Post Office runs on the mall's lower level, close to Belk.
Monroe Crossing finds new tenants for its Sears space
West Roosevelt Boulevard carries U.S. 74 through Monroe toward Charlotte, and in 1979 Monroe Mall opened beside it as a single-story enclosed mall in Monroe, North Carolina.
By 2006 the mall's Belk, part of a chain that started in Monroe in 1888, was short of room and ran its children's and home departments from two shops down the corridor.
In October 2011 a $5.8 million expansion made room for the children's department inside the store again.
By then, after a full interior renovation in 2008, the mall had become Monroe Crossing.
In 2017 two of the mall's three department stores closed: JCPenney in July, and Sears, open there since 2001, that summer.
The Union County Christmas Bureau then used the empty Sears store to collect and hand out holiday donations in 2018 and 2019.
By October 2022 two businesses had taken space there, and the bureau had to look for another building.
Almas Furniture trades from the suite the bureau once used.
Roses, Planet Fitness, and Good Times Arcade fill other spaces, and on Thursday mornings walkers meet by the food court before the stores open.
Belk is the department store that stayed.
Northlake went into receivership in 2021, and in 2024 Eastridge had a whole floor standing empty.
Neiman Marcus now trades under one of these seven roofs, and a state DMV office sits in another's food court.
All seven are still enclosed malls, with shoppers walking from store to store indoors.
Independent Publisher Notice
BestAttractions is an independent editorial publisher. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of any location, business, property owner, manager, government agency, or organization described in this article. Comments posted on this page are not forwarded to, reviewed by, or acted upon by any entity mentioned in the article. For official inquiries, complaints, applications, bookings, or other requests, please contact the relevant entity directly through its official website or other verified channels.
