Northwoods Mall and the car-first crossroads
Northwoods Mall is at 2150 Northwoods Boulevard, where Northwoods Boulevard and Rivers Avenue meet, and the turning lanes are always busy.
From the street, it is clearly made for drivers: wide parking lots, many entrances, and a low building designed to bring people in from US 52 and keep them inside.
The mall opened in 1972 as a fully enclosed regional center, the first built for the South Carolina Lowcountry. Buckner Land Company built the mall, and the long hallways inside let people walk around easily without having to go back out into the heat.
The anchors set the structure. Belk and Sears held two corners, and Kerrison's, a locally owned department store chain, held the third.
Smaller shops lined the corridors between them and stretched a quick stop into a longer walk past glass and lit storefronts.
The property carried a footprint of about 833,000 square feet for years.
It stayed one of the Charleston area's largest indoor malls, second to Citadel Mall, and it held its place as a retail hub at a major North Charleston intersection.
Jacobs buys in, and the mall gets bigger
In 1984, Jacobs, Visconsi & Jacobs acquired Northwoods Mall.
The company later used the Richard E. Jacobs Group name, and it also owned Charleston's Citadel Mall, which sat in the same market and drew from the same regional traffic.
A year later, Northwoods Mall went through a large expansion and renovation.
The 1985 project modernized the interior and added Thalhimer's as a new anchor, widening the department store bench and giving the mall a newer look for a decade built around bright finishes, clean lines, and recent construction.
Kerrison's stayed open during this time and kept running into the early 1990s, making sure there was still a local store as big national chains became more common.
By the late 1980s, Northwoods Mall had the usual mix of small shops, and the Woolworth's area already had seats that hinted at the food court that would come later.
The building stayed mostly one level, making it easy to walk around.
The updates in the mid-1980s helped the mall stay up-to-date, kept its stores filled, and made sure it still looked like the main shopping place at the intersection.
In the early 1980s, the mall's small in-line movie theater closed. In 1985, a new multi-screen cinema opened on an outparcel next to the wing tied to Thalhimer's, later the Dillard's side of the mall.
Anchor turnover at Northwoods: Thalhimer's and Kerrison's exits
In 1992, two Charleston-area Thalhimer's stores were sold, and the Northwoods store began operating as Dillard's.
The wing stayed where it was, but the name on the building changed, and the main stores looked more like big national brands than they did when the mall first opened.
Sears and Belk stayed in the same spots, still connected to 1970s.
Kerrison's made it into the 1990s, but it did not make it through. The store closed and was demolished in late 1992, ending the locally owned anchor that had helped define Northwoods Mall from its first decade.
In February 1993, a new two-level JCPenney opened on the former Kerrison's site.
The store relocated from the nearby Charles Towne Square mall as that property declined, and the move gave Northwoods a larger department store box and a layout quirk it still carries.
The mall reads as one level until you reach the Penney's, where the building suddenly asks you to go up. In April 1993, the first Disney Store in South Carolina opened at Northwoods Mall.
The Disney Store wasn't an anchor, but it drew people into that part of the mall. It was the kind of place that could turn a quick stop into a whole afternoon visit.
Woolworth's closes, food court takes over
Northwoods Mall had a Woolworth's, and for many years it included a lunch counter, a built-in break that once made discount shopping feel like a small town.
By the late 1990s, as the decade ended, that style was disappearing, and Northwoods changed along with it.
In 1997, the last Woolworth's at the mall closed, and the space was turned into Northwoods' permanent food court. The change gave the building a set place where people could sit without leaving the mall.
It matched the late 1990s mall style: big stores at the ends, food in the middle, and smaller shops along the way.
The mall's ownership changed to a setup that would stay the same for a while. Jacobs sold Northwoods to CBL & Associates Properties, and CBL started running the mall as it entered the next decade.
By the end of the 1990s, the main stores were Belk, Dillard's, JCPenney, and Sears.
CBL renovates in 2004 and adds Carrabba's
In 2004, CBL gave Northwoods Mall a new look to make it feel more up-to-date and easier to get around.
The entrances got bigger, the inside and signs were refreshed, and the building stayed easy to find your way around and looked modern, even though its main shape stayed the same.
Shoppers still parked in the same big lots and walked into the same indoor hallways, but the mall no longer looked stuck in the 1970s.
Dillard's made its store bigger again in 2004, making that part of the mall a place people would keep coming back to.
More places to eat were added too, with Carrabba's Italian Grill opening as a separate restaurant, giving people a sit-down choice besides the food court.
The chain was owned by the same company as Outback Steakhouse, which helped keep the area busy even after the stores closed for the day.
During the 2000s, the mall kept a mix of well-known national stores like Bath & Body Works, American Eagle, Aeropostale, and Books-A-Million, and the hallways stayed busy as the years went by.
Sears closes, Burlington splits the box
Sears stayed at Northwoods Mall for decades, so its departure marked a clear change from the mall's opening era.
In 2015, Sears Holdings spun off 235 properties into Seritage Growth Properties, including the Northwoods location.
By spring 2017, the store was set to close as part of a restructuring, and the Northwoods Sears closed in June 2017.
The old Sears building did not get one new store to replace it. The space was split into separate parts. Burlington moved into half of the building, and the other half stayed empty as space reserved for a future tenant.
Burlington became one of the mall's anchors starting in 2018, keeping that end of the property occupied.
A 2022 site plan listed the new layout in numbers: Burlington at 52,800 square feet, an adjacent space at 53,400 square feet, and another 8,000 square feet, for a total of 114,200 square feet.
The plan also showed about 650 parking spaces and labeled the layout as a conceptual plan with entitlements still pending.
Part of the former Sears space opened for use, while the remaining space stayed available for later.
2021 shooting, lawsuits, and mid-2020s mall metrics
In February 2021, a gunman started shooting inside Northwoods and hurt three shoppers. The victims survived.
In 2023, two adult victims sued the mall's owners and security companies, saying there were issues with security cameras and patrols. The cases were still going on in early 2025.
The property continued operating under CBL ownership and management. The anchor stores are Belk, Dillard's, JCPenney, and Burlington.
Books-A-Million and Planet Fitness operate as junior anchors. Planet Fitness has been listed as temporarily closed for construction, with an estimated reopening at the end of September 2025.
The mall's footprint is about 748,000 square feet, which is smaller than in earlier decades.
For 2025, the company said there are about 100 stores, around 4,250,000 visits each year, and about 398,000 people living in the area the mall serves.
Sales per square foot was listed at $369, and mall-store space leased was listed at 97%.
In 2026, Northwoods Mall is still open. The main stores bring in visitors, and there are enough stores to make the trip worth it. The lighting and cleanliness affect how it feels inside, and it can get too warm at times.
Walking through the mall shows a mix of open, familiar stores and some empty or closed spaces. How busy it is depends on the day. Some days are crowded. Other days are quiet and feel a little run-down.
