If you walked through Northgate Mall in spring 2020, you would have seen a building that was mostly shut down in practice. Most of the department store anchor spaces were already empty.
In long parts of the inside hallways, the main sound was air moving through the ventilation system. At the far end, one movie theater still had showtimes and was one of the few things still operating.
On May 1, 2020, tenants inside the mall got an email telling them the mall would close permanently. Some had operated businesses there for years.
None got advance notice before that message arrived. The outdoor shops were told they might reopen when pandemic conditions allowed, although many never reopened.
The address was 1058 West Club Boulevard in Durham, North Carolina.
The building had been part of the city since 1960, spanning nearly sixty years of hair salons, sneaker stores, a food court, and department stores.
Northwood Retail named the pandemic's financial impact as the reason for the closure. The pandemic did not create the debt or empty the anchor spaces. It was the final event that pushed the mall to close.
How Northgate Mall Got Its Start in Durham
The land north of West Club Boulevard had a largely rural character into the late 1950s, shaped by the Ellerbe Creek valley and bordered by north-side residential neighborhoods.
The area became commercially viable after the US 70 bypass opened in 1958 and 1959.
W. Kenan Rand had been trying to develop the property since 1949, when he and the Coca-Cola Bottling Company applied to rezone it for a bottling plant.
More than fifty nearby homeowners opposed the application. The Planning and Zoning Commission recommended denial, and the City Council agreed.
The plant was built on Hillsborough Road in 1966. Rand held on to the property anyway.
When the bypass opened, Rand redirected his plans toward retail. He broke ground in 1959 on roughly 32 acres near Club Boulevard and Gregson Street.
By 1960, the first completed strip was in place, anchored by Colonial Stores, Kerr Drug, and Roses.
Within two years, the center had roughly doubled in size.
A 700-Seat Theater and the Early Strip
On Christmas Day 1962, Northgate Mall opened the Northgate Theatre. It had one screen, about 700 seats, and was operated by Consolidated Theatres of Charlotte.
The night before, invited guests attended a preview. The first public showing was "Jumbo."
Over the next decade, the center worked like many suburban shopping centers of that time. Stores lined a parking lot.
Shoppers drove in, parked, visited stores, and left. The setup worked while there was no stronger nearby alternative.
By the late 1960s, enclosed malls were drawing shoppers away from open-air centers.
They offered indoor, climate-controlled corridors that let people move from store to store without going outside or driving between stops.
Northgate's owners responded because they had the land and the money to do it.
On June 17, 1975, the original theater was split into two screens and renamed the Northgate Twin Theatres. It later had several operators and closed in 1985.
The multiplex that many residents remembered came later. It was a different building on the same property that opened about twenty years later.
How an Open Strip Became an Enclosed Mall
Northgate Mall changed from an open-air shopping center into an enclosed regional mall in the early 1970s, 1973 or 1974, depending on the source.
Sears and Thalhimers became the anchor stores. The property was reorganized around an indoor corridor.
The northwest side along Guess Road changed at the same time. A new Big Star supermarket replaced the original Colonial Stores location.
That part of the property became a second strip-style shopping area outside the enclosed mall.
Northgate did not just add a roof. The layout of the site was changed.
In an enclosed mall, a shopper who came in for one store would pass many others along the way.
The point of the model was to keep people walking through connected indoor hallways instead of driving from one storefront to another.
Northgate Mall was close to Duke University with access to the US 70 interchange. For several years after the change, that approach worked.
Three Additions, One Competitor, and a Makeover
In 1986, construction added a larger Thalhimers store and a multi-level parking deck to the mall's north end. In 1987, another section opened with a Food Gallery and a Business Center.
In 1994, Hecht's arrived with its own parking deck and 53,000 more square feet of enclosed retail space, and the chain would become Macy's in 2006.
A 2004 market analysis placed Northgate's gross leasable area at 776,491 square feet.
The Streets at Southpoint opened in 2002 in southern Durham, and from that year forward, Northgate Mall was competing with a newer, larger property for the same national retailers and the same shoppers.
Tenant quality slipped as leases ended without equivalent replacements.
A major renovation was announced in 2004. Phoenix Theatres' Stadium 10 opened near the Gregson Street entrance in 2006 - a 10-screen, roughly 1,700-seat multiplex with stadium seating.
Alongside it, part of the old Belk wing was converted into an outdoor plaza-style retail village. Stadium 10 drew consistent audiences over the following years.
The outdoor plaza filled slowly and never reached the commercial density the renovation had assumed.
How Sixty Years of Retail Ended in an Email
By late 2017, the former Macy's building had been bought for Duke University Health System clinic and office space.
Planet Fitness also signed a lease at the mall, and Measurement Inc., an educational testing firm, reserved 21,000 square feet for offices.
The property was no longer being filled mainly with retail tenants. Space was being shifted to other paying uses.
In October 2018, Northwood Investors held $62 million in promissory notes tied to the property and was moving toward foreclosure.
In December, the Rand family agreed to sell the mall to Northwood. Northwood had already bought the mortgage and had threatened foreclosure over missed payments.
By September 2019, the former Sears building was empty enough for state officials to turn it into a Hurricane Dorian emergency shelter.
More than 500 beds were set up inside. On May 4, 2020, the interior of the mall closed permanently.
Northwood Retail pointed to the pandemic's severe financial impact on both tenants and the property. Interior tenants had not been given advance notice before the announcement arrived by email.
What Happened After Nearly Six Years of Vacancy
Northgate Mall stood empty, but the debate over the site did not stop. Walltown residents had already started organizing before the mall closed.
In January 2019, more than fifty people met at St. John's Missionary Baptist Church to discuss what should come next.
By early 2020, they had created a ten-point plan for the property. It called for affordable housing, locally owned businesses, public green space, and a Walltown history hub.
After the mall closed, that work continued through the Northgate Mall Neighborhood Council, which eventually brought in more than 600 residents from seven surrounding neighborhoods.
Northwood revised its plans for the site several times. In 2022, it proposed a commercial-only project with office space, retail, and life science uses, but no housing.
Neighborhood residents opposed that plan. By May 2024, Northwood had changed the proposal to include affordable housing and a grocery store, though it still needed city approval to move forward.
In August 2025, the Durham City Council adopted the Walltown Small Area Plan.
The plan set goals for the site, including at least 30 percent affordable housing, an affordable grocery, public open space, and a community space with a Walltown history hub.
The property changed hands again in late 2025, when Regency Centers moved to acquire about one-third of the land from Northwood.
Regency then filed plans for six commercial buildings under the name Ellerbe Square. In March 2026, Target was confirmed as the anchor tenant. No opening date had been announced.
Northgate Mall
Former shopping mall in Durham, NC
Address: 1058 West Club Boulevard, Durham, NC 27701
Opened: 1960
Closed: May 4, 2020
Developer: W. Kenan Rand
Owner: Northwood Investors
Floor area: 900,000 sq ft
