Before any Sears or Chick-fil-A opened on this property, the land was an army base. Camp Wadsworth operated here from 1917 to 1919 and trained American soldiers before they left to fight in the trenches of World War I.
The site, near what later became West Blackstock Road, sits about three miles southwest of downtown Spartanburg.
In 1972, Arlen Shopping Centers looked at the land and saw it as a place for a new retail development.
In April that year, the company announced plans for a large shopping complex on 75 acres it had bought from the Yeomans family.
The location, near Interstate 26 and U.S. Highway 29, was practical. It was close enough to attract shoppers from across Spartanburg County, but far enough from downtown to provide plenty of space for a large project.
When it opened, the development became the largest mall in South Carolina. Spartanburg County viewed that as an important point of pride.
The mall at 205 West Blackstock Road is still there today. It remains the only enclosed mall left in Spartanburg County.
It had survived two ownership bankruptcies, the loss of several anchor stores, competition from a rival mall across town, and major changes in the retail business by the time the 2020s arrived.
Ribbon Cuts and Brass Bands: The 1975 Opening
Groundbreaking happened on September 12, 1974. Not quite a year later, on August 21, 1975, Sears opened its doors - a big two-level, 193,400-square-foot store that became the first operational tenant in the building.
Meyers-Arnold, a Greenville-based department store, followed on October 3, taking 70,000 square feet on one level.
The formal opening on October 28, 1975, was exactly the kind of event a new mall would throw.
Arlen executives Jay Solomon and Charles B. Lebovitz were there alongside Spartanburg Mayor John Baehr and County Commission Chairman Robert G. Rowell.
Miss Spartanburg 1975 Annette Huckaby and Miss Greenville 1975 Rita Chastain cut the ribbon while the University of South Carolina Bicentennial Chorus and local high school bands performed.
The mall opened that day with 45 stores.
Belk-Hudson, a two-level, 124,500-square-foot anchor, came in on April 21, 1976, pushing the total to 68 stores and approximately 786,000 square feet.
J.C. Penney then added a 99,100-square-foot store on March 1, 1978, rounding out the original four-anchor setup.
Early tenants included Chick-fil-A, Piccadilly Cafeteria, Camelot Music, and Record Bar. For Spartanburg shoppers in the late 1970s, this was the place.
Food Courts, New Owners, and a Rival Appears
A renovation that started in January 1986 cleared out a vintage locomotive display near Piccadilly Cafeteria and replaced it with a proper food court named "The Garden," along with new flooring, mirrors, skylights, and neon lighting throughout the common areas.
The food court opened June 1, 1986, with Taco Bell, Yummy Yogurt, and Sbarro among the new additions.
Competition had shown up in the meantime. Hillcrest Mall opened in 1982, and for a while, Spartanburg had two indoor malls trying to attract the same shoppers.
WestGate Mall proved harder to dislodge. Hillcrest lost a key opportunity in 1987 when Meyers-Arnold was acquired by Uptons, a Norcross, Georgia-based retailer - the WestGate Meyers-Arnold location closed on August 2.
It reopened under the Uptons' name on November 1, but as part of that same deal, Uptons scrapped a separate plan to open at Hillcrest.
Losing that anchor hurt. By 1999, Hillcrest was being converted out of the traditional mall format, and by 2001, it was gone as a competitor entirely.
WestGate Mall had already changed hands twice by then - sold to JMB Realty in the late 1970s, then to Bramalea Centers in 1988.
Most shoppers hardly noticed those changes in who owned the company, but those changes were very important for what happened next.
CBL Buys In and Rebuilds WestGate Mall
Bramalea filed for bankruptcy in 1992, and CBL & Associates Properties out of Chattanooga stepped in.
CBL was a successor to Arlen, the company that had originally built WestGate, so the mall was in some sense returning to familiar hands.
CBL purchased the mall building in March 1995 - notably not the land, which stayed under separate local ownership - and moved fast.
The expansion that followed transformed both the size and character of the place. A new west wing brought in Dillard's, two levels and 150,000 square feet, positioned right at the original main entrance.
Beside it went J.B. White, an Augusta, Georgia-based chain, in a two-level, 158,000-square-foot store. Belk expanded to 156,800 square feet.
Forty more stores and services joined the lineup, including Gadzooks, The Gap, and Marks & Morgan Jewelers, and the old food court was rebuilt and rebranded as "The Oasis," with eight food stalls and two sit-down restaurants.
On the second level directly above The Oasis, Regal Westgate Mall 8 opened on October 25, 1996. A mall-wide dedication had taken place two days earlier.
WestGate Mall now had six anchors, along with well over 100 stores and services spread across more than a million square feet. It was the first mall in either Carolina to hit that benchmark.
J.B. White rebranded as Proffitt's in October 1998.
Uptons closed in 1999, and its former space was split between Bed Bath & Beyond, which opened in December 2000, and Dick's Sporting Goods, which moved in during mid-2001.
Costco Comes In, the Movie Theater Goes Dark
Belk acquired the Proffitt's department store chain in 2005, which immediately created an awkward situation: two Belk stores in the same mall.
The solution was straightforward enough.
The Proffitt's store closed in December 2005, the building came down in 2006, and a freestanding one-level, 151,000-square-foot Costco opened on the same footprint on August 15, 2007, with no interior connection to the mall itself.
Movies had been part of WestGate Mall practically from day one. The ABC Southeastern Westgate Twin Theatres opened on Christmas Day 1975 as a two-screen cinema and closed in January 1990.
General Cinema's Westgate Mall Cinema VI opened in the west parking area on February 17, 1984, and was demolished in 1995 for the CBL expansion.
Regal Westgate Mall 8 carried the tradition forward for another 25 years before pandemic-era troubles caught up with it - that theater closed October 14, 2021, and the second level above The Oasis has been quiet ever since.
WestGate's Anchor Shakeout and Receivership
The news came on May 31, 2018. Sears was closing 72 stores across the country, and the WestGate location was on the list.
Think about that for a second: the store that had been the very first tenant to open at WestGate - the one that drew people out to West Blackstock Road before the rest of the mall even existed - shut permanently in September 2018.
Forty-three years in the same building.
More followed. Dick's Sporting Goods scaled back to a clearance format in 2019 and closed completely in 2021.
Bed Bath & Beyond, a WestGate Mall tenant since 2000, put the Spartanburg store on a late-January 2023 closure list. The company filed for Chapter 11 in April 2023, and the chain ultimately liquidated.
Behind all of it, CBL had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November 2020 and defaulted on its WestGate loan.
Spinoso Real Estate Group came in as receiver and property manager in September 2023.
A month later, the mall went up for sale, with roughly 82% occupancy and an estimated $3.2 million annual net operating income.
Belk, Dillard's, Costco, and JCPenney held on as anchors, and Rack Room Shoes, Bath & Body Works, H&M, and Victoria's Secret were still pulling people through the corridors.
Namdar Buys In, Rural King Fills the Gap
On May 23, 2024, a joint venture led by Namdar Realty Group of Great Neck, New York, along with Mason Asset Management and CH Capital Group, bought WestGate Mall for over $15 million.
Greenville-based Reedy River Retail handled the sale. Earlier, CBL had an outstanding non-recourse mortgage loan of about $28.7 million secured by the property.
That meant the new owners bought the mall for a little over half of the loan balance CBL reported on the property in 2023–2024.
Those involved in the sale said shoppers would not see any immediate changes, and the property continued to serve as an important retail center.
Any discussion of larger future redevelopment remained only a possibility.
The 2023 comprehensive plan included ideas such as multifamily housing, a hotel, and green space, but none of that was happening yet.
The clearest change under the new owners came in fall 2025.
Rural King, a farm-and-home retail chain based in Illinois and founded in 1960, bought the long-vacant former Sears building and opened the first Rural King store in South Carolina.
A soft opening took place on October 10, 2025. Grand opening events ran from October 17 through 19.
The store sells Carhartt, Ariat, Wrangler, and Under Armour clothing, along with farm equipment, livestock feed, firearms, and lawn mowers. It also offers free popcorn and coffee at the entrance.
The store hired about 75 local employees. The building had stood empty for seven years after Sears closed, and it was once again filled with customers.
