Sooner Fashion Mall opens beside I-35
In July 1976, Dillard's was hiring part-time clerks, credit staff, stock handlers, custodians, and alteration tailors for a store that hadn't opened yet.
Monumental Properties of Baltimore opened Sooner Fashion Mall on August 12, 1976, at the northwest corner of Main Street and Interstate 35 in Norman, Oklahoma, and the Dillard's store opened with it.
The mall was enclosed and built on a single level, with Dillard's and Sears as its big stores. Smaller tenants came in around them.
By the end of that August, a Record Bar was selling 45s, 8-track tapes, and cassettes, under mall hours of 10 to 9 from Monday through Saturday and 1 to 6 on Sunday.
Live plants grew in the common areas, and a Chick-fil-A was open by October. In 1978 the mall grew.
An expansion brought in JCPenney and H.J. Wilson Co., and H.J. Wilson came on its own terms: it owned its 34,400-square-foot building and leased only the ground beneath it.
By September 1979, the center held 71 stores and shops and was about 96 percent leased.
That month Monumental sold it to the Equitable Life Assurance Society for $10.1 million.
Norman used the place for more than shopping. The city's Christmas parade floats went on display inside in December 1977.
By 1981, Santa posed for weekend photos at $4.25 each, any number of children to a picture.
In July 1989, the doors opened at 7 a.m. for walkers while the stores kept their 10 a.m. start, and B. Dalton and Waldenbooks were both selling books in the mall that year.
By December 1991, the mall's gift certificates were good in 80 stores, and Service Merchandise had joined Dillard's, Sears, and JCPenney among the biggest.
Daylight, a bigger Dillard's, and a new name
General Growth Properties bought Sooner Fashion Mall in late 1996.
Early in 1999, it announced a rebuild of the common areas, to begin in April and wrap up by early November, at a mall that was close to full.
The Gap and Victoria's Secret had recently opened there, Stein Mart had moved into a large space that had sat empty for a long stretch, and Auntie Anne's had leased space for its first Norman store in 1998.
Not every tenant sold goods: in 1995 and 1996 a market-research firm ran an interviewing office in the mall.
Omniplan of Dallas designed the work, and Vratsinas Construction of Little Rock carried it out.
Sections of the ceiling were raised to bring daylight into the corridors, with new decorative and indirect lighting beneath them.
The mall gained a play area for children, restrooms for families, and clusters of seating it called comfort zones, plus new entrances meant to make it easier to spot from the shopping district around it.
Dillard's grew in the same year by 35,000 square feet, more floor than the entire H.J. Wilson building had held in 1979.
By late November 1999, the work inside and out was done, shortly after the target date, and the property was going by a shorter name: Sooner Mall.
The tenant roster moved too. In March 1999, while Service Merchandise was closing other Oklahoma stores, it kept the Norman one open.
By 2000 the chain no longer appeared among the mall's major tenants. Old Navy did, beside Dillard's, JCPenney, Sears, and Stein Mart.
A bigger shopping district opens to the north
In 2005 Norman was arguing over public support for a new retail district at University North Park, north of the mall, and over whether it would pull tenants away from Sooner Mall.
The open-air district began opening in 2006 and kept adding buildings.
By the end of 2014, it covered more than 1.06 million square feet, with Target, Kohl's, Academy, HomeGoods, and a Crest grocery among its largest tenants.
Sooner Mall covered 511,600 and stayed full. Stein Mart was one of its major tenants in 2008, as the district to the north was still expanding.
The 2012 holiday season began in mid-November with Milk & Cookies with Mrs. Claus in the JCPenney wing, kept Santa photos running until Christmas Eve, and set aside two nights for pets to pose with St. Nick, with Chick-fil-A and the Pioneer Library System backing the program.
In 2013 the mall had the soft-play area, the family restrooms (by then with a nursing lounge), and the comfort-zone seating from the 1999 work, and its corridors held chains such as Aeropostale, Justice, Gymboree, and Eddie Bauer alongside the department stores and Sun & Ski Sports.
When the available space was tallied in 2014, there was none, and by mid-2016 it added up to 5,000 square feet, under 1 percent of the mall.
Sears closes its Norman store
After 2016 national mall chains began shutting stores, and Sooner Mall's were among them.
Forever 21 had closed its store by August 2018. In October 2018, Sears put the Norman store on a list of 142 closings across the country.
It had been one of the mall's large stores since 1976, in its own building at 3201 W. Main Street, and by November a liquidation sale was under way inside.
More of the mall stood vacant by the end of that year, with Sears trading through its bankruptcy.
The Sears store had been part of a joint venture between General Growth and Seritage in 2017.
In 2018, Brookfield bought General Growth Properties in a cash-and-stock deal that included $9.25 billion in cash, and Sooner Mall changed hands as part of the deal.
By mid-2019 the Sears building was empty, one of the largest vacant stores in Norman.
On Halloween that year, the mall ran free trick-or-treating from 5 to 8 p.m., with orange pumpkins marking the stores that took part.
Get Air and services refill smaller spaces
While the Sears building sat vacant through 2022, the mall's smaller spaces went to play and services.
Get Air Trampoline Park was operating by 2023, with Dillard's, JCPenney, and Old Navy as the anchors, and one interior corridor had benches set under hanging lights.
In August 2024 about 2,000 square feet inside was approved for demolition.
That fall, Valir Health remodeled a space of about 2,200 square feet, Tradehome Shoes got an $80,000 remodel of its store, and two fire-system projects worth $200,000 and $100,000 went into the property.
Public agencies used the mall as well. Norman Emergency Management held a preparedness event inside in September 2021.
From late March to mid-April 2025, Norman Public Schools hung its fine-arts preview show in a mall space numbered 455, on bulletin boards the mall provided.
None of it filled the anchor building, which stood empty at the end of 2024, when about 18 percent of the mall was vacant.
To the north, University North Park had grown to about 1.13 million square feet and was just over 1 percent vacant.
Dick's House of Sport and a 4-4 vote
In early 2025, the mall's representatives started talks with Norman officials about public help for the Sears building.
The first version, put to the city's Economic Development Advisory Board in November 2025, offered up to half of the new city sales tax above a baseline, capped at $500,000 a year.
In March 2026, the City Council approved a term sheet with a different split: the mall would get back all of the growth in the city's general-purpose sales tax above a baseline drawn from 2022 to 2024 collections, up to $300,000 a year.
The baseline was later fixed at about $1.7 million a year.
The money would cover tenant allowances, lighting, landscaping, signage, restrooms, and paving, and sales from businesses that simply moved over from elsewhere in Norman would not count.
The owner named in the deal carried the old name, Sooner Fashion Mall L.L.C., and its parcel left out Dillard's and LongHorn Steakhouse, which sat on separately held property, as H.J. Wilson's building once had.
The advisory board questioned whether their sales should count, and whether the mall should get the full 100 percent.
By mid-June 2026, the retailer behind the plan was known: Dick's House of Sport, the large-format store of Dick's Sporting Goods, planned for the whole Sears building with about $25 million in private investment.
The council put off its vote in early June, and three of its members hosted a town hall open to the public, with the mall's general manager there.
Late that month, the council split 4-4, with the mayor among the votes against and one member absent. The tie meant the agreement failed.
Sooner Mall after the vote
The June vote left the Sears building as it was, with the space Dick's wanted still waiting.
Dick's House of Sport is not among Sooner Mall's tenants.
The rest of the mall is open, enclosed, on one level.
Dillard's and JCPenney are its department stores, with Old Navy, Sun & Ski Sports, and Shoe Dept. Encore among the larger shops.
Get Air, Glowgolf, Soonercade Family Entertainment, and Kiddleton fill other spaces with games and play, next to barbers, a spa, physical therapy, and a credit union.
The food side runs to six businesses, from Auntie Anne's and a Chick-fil-A near Dillard's that has served the mall since 1976 to El Chico and a LongHorn Steakhouse.
The mall opens at 11 a.m. and closes at 8, with noon to 6 on Sunday, and Brookfield Properties handles the leasing.
At the end of 2025, about 15 percent of the mall stood vacant, a smaller share than a year earlier.
In October 2026, the Royal Duck Fall Tour set up obstacle courses and large slides on the southeast corner of the parking lot, and a touring cirque show pitched its tent at the mall for performances late in the month.
Walkers are let in at 8 every morning except Sunday, before any store opens, and can keep walking until the doors close.
In 2014 the mall had no space left to lease. Its largest empty space now is a whole department-store building, vacant since 2019.
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.
