Hickory had already tried the mall format before Valley Hills Mall came along. Catawba Mall had been Hickory's first, older, and smaller, located about 3 miles west of the new Valley Hills site along U.S. 70.
When Cadillac Fairview Corporation opened Valley Hills on August 16, 1978, it was clear fairly quickly that the city did not need two.
RTKL Associates designed the building, and the unusual shape came down to the land - the plot was narrow, so the floor plan came out L-shaped, or V-shaped, depending on where you stood and how you looked at it.
The skylights ran along the sides of the roofline rather than down the center, angled in the same fashion as the ones at SouthPark Mall in Charlotte.
A terraced fountain sat in the lower level of the center court. Dense fake plants filled the space around it and gave the interior a lush, overgrown quality that was fashionable in that era.
Belk - operating then as Belk Broome - took one end. Sears took the other. About 40 specialty shops filled the corridors between them on opening day, with plans to build toward roughly 90 tenants.
A food court ran near Sears on the lower level.
Annabelle's Restaurant and Pub was the sit-down option for people who wanted something more than fast food - it had a bar, and it drew customers who weren't necessarily there to shop at all.
From the start, Valley Hills pulled in people from six counties across the North Carolina foothills.
The Year J.C. Penney Walked Out the Door
Valley Hills and Catawba Mall coexisted for close to a decade without either one putting the other under. Part of what kept Catawba alive was simple: both malls had a Belk. Shoppers had reason to use both.
That ended in 1988. J.C. Penney had been running a large two-level store at Catawba Mall and moved the whole operation to a new space at Valley Hills.
At the same time, Belk folded its Catawba location into the Valley Hills store and stopped operating out of both places.
Two major anchors gone in the same year. Catawba's foot traffic had no real reason to continue after that, and it didn't.
The building hung on in other forms for a while. It became Catawba Furniture Mall at some point, then a U-Haul storage and rental facility - which is where it ended up and where it stayed.
Valley Hills, meanwhile, now had Belk, Sears, and J.C. Penney all under one roof, in the only enclosed mall within a 40-mile stretch.
People from six surrounding counties made regular trips. The competition was gone.
In 1997, General Growth Properties - one of the larger mall operators in the country at the time - added Valley Hills to its national portfolio.
1999-2001: Valley Hills Expands and Modernizes
The 1999-2001 renovation was the most significant construction the mall had seen since it opened.
Two new wings were added to the building, pushing the gross leasable area to around 931,000 square feet. The original L-shaped floor plan had, by this point, become a Z.
One wing added Dillard's, a department store that had no presence in Hickory before this.
It gave the mall four anchor tenants - Belk, Sears, JCPenney, and Dillard's - for the first time. The other wing created a new main entrance on the north side, between Belk and Sears.
It moved the food court from the lower level near Sears to a larger, dedicated space on the upper level. The interior got a full refresh, and the mall came out of it with a new logo and updated exterior entrances.
Some of the original 1978 elements stayed. The angled skylights RTKL had built in were kept, along with the terraced fountain on the lower level of the center court.
The lush fake plants from the original build were part of what gave the older section of the mall its look, and that carried through.
The Dillard's wing was built on a more conventional plan and felt different from the older parts of the building.
In 2015, a section of the upper level was reconfigured to bring in H&M, which took a 20,000-square-foot space and became the most prominent new tenant in years.
Sears Closes, and the Pandemic Follows Right After
On February 8, 2020, Sears announced it was closing its Valley Hills location. The store had been there from the very beginning, anchoring the north end of the mall since August 1978.
It stayed at the same address for more than four decades. It shut down that April, leaving a large section of the building empty.
A few weeks before Sears actually closed, the pandemic arrived. Valley Hills shut down in March 2020, along with most everything else, and reopened on May 12.
Some stores came back, and some didn't - held back by restrictions, by reduced foot traffic, by the general uncertainty of running a retail business when nobody knew when normal shopping habits would return.
Before 2020, the mall was pulling in close to 2.9 million visitors a year. That number fell.
The upper-level food court went from being one of the busier spots in the building to a noticeably quieter place. Brookfield Property Partners had taken over General Growth Properties in 2018.
By 2021, it was managing Valley Hills through the post-pandemic slump. The mall's appraised value had come down from what it had been just a few years earlier.
The former Sears building sat empty and had no obvious replacement lined up, sitting on a separately parceled piece of land that could be sold or developed on its own.
New Owners, a Museum, and One Empty Building
New owners took over Valley Hills in April 2023. An affiliate of Namdar Realty Group bought the mall through a receivership sale and took on the existing $55 million CMBS loan.
Mason Asset Management became the managing partner. Namdar has used this same approach at other malls around the country. It buys properties that are in trouble and keeps them open and operating.
The three surviving anchors from the 2001 lineup stayed in place: Belk, Dillard's, and JCPenney. H&M also remains. Shoe Dept.
Encore is listed among the current anchors and now uses part of the former Sears space. Around 90 specialty stores make up the rest of the mall.
These include American Eagle Outfitters, Aeropostale, Bath & Body Works, Hot Topic, and Victoria's Secret.
The mall also has a 28-foot antique carousel and a children's play area, which gives families reasons to visit on quieter weekdays.
In September 2025, the Hickory Museum of Art closed its main building for renovation. The museum moved its programs into a temporary satellite space on the upper floor of Valley Hills, near Dillard's.
The satellite is open Wednesday through Saturday from 11 am to 4 pm and Sunday from noon to 6 pm.
The schedule includes rotating exhibitions. Tommy Stine's retrospective runs from February 11 through March 15, 2026.
The space also hosts free hands-on activities and community events as part of the museum's "Art for All" effort.
The former Sears building went on the market in November 2025. The listing covered 165,959 square feet on 12.2 acres and noted the space was 8% leased.
No buyer or redevelopment plan has been announced.
Valley Hills Mall today
Valley Hills Mall still feels like it is in decent shape and still useful, even though it does not have the buzz it once had.
It is comfortable for a long walk, with cool air when it is hot and a warm inside when it is cold.
The layout and older design touches give the place a nostalgic look, so it does not feel stripped down or bare.
The condition is not spotless everywhere. Some small cleaning problems appear, and the hallways can look a bit worn when you look closely. The bigger drawback is the energy.
Some areas of the mall are quiet, with fewer people and a few empty spots that make the place feel bigger than it is.
Still, the shopping center is reliable and feels safe and well-kept for a regular visit.
