Two Takeovers Later, Hulen Mall in Fort Worth, TX Is Still Taking Rent

Hulen Mall is an enclosed two-level shopping mall at 4800 S. Hulen Street in southwest Fort Worth, Texas. It opened on August 4, 1977 with 87 stores, Montgomery Ward, and a central food area called The Park.

Dillard's arrived in 1994 as part of the west-side expansion. Ward liquidated in 2001, Sears replaced it, and Sears left in 2020.

Its owner filed for Chapter 11 in 2009 with 158 malls attached. A fire shattered the glass roof between Macy's and Red Robin in June 2025. The mall reopened within days.

Nearly 50 years of retail here has kept going, and the biggest unanswered question is a building nobody has leased.

Hulen Mall in Fort Worth, TX

The store that opened before Hulen Mall did

Sanger-Harris opened on May 5, 1977, three months before the mall it was built to anchor.

Three levels, 200,000 square feet, a beauty salon, a design studio, and a restaurant called The Potting Shed.

Outside: entrance arches and mosaic-tile panels.

Hulen Mall is a two-level enclosed regional shopping mall at 4800 S. Hulen Street in southwest Fort Worth, Texas, where Hulen Street meets Interstate 20.

The Rouse Company of Columbia, Maryland, developed it with Federated Department Stores, HOK designed it, and Sanger-Harris was Federated's Dallas division.

The enclosed center and Montgomery Ward were dedicated on August 4, 1977.

Ward took 154,000 square feet on two levels, with a pharmacy, a beauty salon, a Frontier Room restaurant, and a freestanding auto center.

Hulen opened with 87 stores and 580,000 square feet of leasable space. Casual Corner, The Gap, The Limited, Radio Shack, Thom McAn, Musicland.

It also had a central food area called The Park: Chelsea Street Pub, Swensen's Ice Cream Parlor, Heidi's Bavarian Deli, Ol' Dan Tucker's Smokehouse.

Food courts were still new to American malls in the 1970s.

A new sign in 1987, a new wing in 1994

On January 16, 1987, Federated announced it would combine its two Texas department-store divisions, Foley's and Sanger-Harris.

The Sanger-Harris name came off the Hulen store later that year. The arches and the tile panels stayed.

The bigger change came during the Foley's years, on the west side of the property.

Parts of a new wing opened in 1993, and the work finished when Dillard's opened on August 24, 1994 in a 230,000-square-foot store.

The food court moved into the addition.

Leasable space grew by more than half, to 916,700 square feet, and the store count reached 140.

A two-anchor mall became a three-anchor mall, and that layout is still the layout.

Ward liquidates, Sears moves in a year later

Montgomery Ward went through bankruptcy and liquidated, and the Hulen store closed in March 2001. It was the mall's first empty anchor.

Sears took over the same two-level shell and opened on March 21, 2002, putting the lineup back to three: Foley's, Dillard's, Sears.

The move also pulled Sears' Fort Worth business toward Hulen and away from the older Fort Worth Town Center, which had opened in 1962 as the open-air Seminary South.

Hulen's size gets quoted several different ways.

In 2001 the whole center measured 938,000 square feet, while the mall-only figure was 327,000: anchors and outparcels are often owned and counted separately.

Sold for $12.6 billion, renamed again

General Growth Properties bought The Rouse Company for $12.6 billion including assumed debt, and the deal closed on November 12, 2004.

Hulen kept its name and its operating format under an owner with malls across the country.

Federated bought May Department Stores, Foley's parent, in 2005.

On September 9, 2006, the Foley's at 4650 S. Hulen became Macy's, the third department-store name in that 1977 building.

Then the credit crisis. General Growth filed for Chapter 11 on April 16, 2009, along with 158 of its malls, unable to refinance its mortgages.

Hulen stayed open through all of it and left with the reorganized company in November 2010.

New floors inside, restaurants pushed outside

The 2011 renovation was the kind shoppers notice: new tile flooring, seating, lighting, signage, escalator work, and restrooms redone at an estimated $200,000.

The other half of the project faced the parking lot.

A 22,000-square-foot outdoor restaurant plaza went up along the east side, bringing in Abuelo's and BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse, with Red Robin joining later.

Those doors open to the outside and keep their own hours.

A $1.2 million build-out turned 22,000 square feet of existing mall space into H&M, which opened on September 8, 2016.

Macy's added its off-price Backstage department inside its own building the same year.

Leasing in the landlord's space was 98.2 percent in 2012 and 98 percent in 2017, with all three anchors trading.

The empty box at 4900 S. Hulen

Brookfield Property Partners finished buying GGP on August 28, 2018, and refinanced Hulen a month later.

A $90 million variable-rate loan replaced a $118.7 million fixed-rate one, cutting the principal by $28.7 million.

Sears announced in July 2020 that the Hulen store was closing, and it shut that year.

The building had held a department store since August 1977. Ward's vacancy lasted a year. This one has run for six.

The former Sears sits on its own parcel with its own owner, so it can be leased or rebuilt without anyone selling the mall.

It's being marketed now as 139,700 square feet on two levels across 14.1 acres, parking on three sides, pad sites available.

What's open at Hulen Mall in 2026

On the evening of June 27, 2025, fire crews were called to the roof between Macy's and Red Robin.

The mall was evacuated. Skylight glass broke loudly enough that people thought the roof had collapsed, which it hadn't.

Four stores took heavy water damage and one person was taken to a hospital.

Hulen reopened within days, with the Macy's wing shut a while longer for repairs.

Leasing never stopped.

Windsor redid 3,100 square feet in 2023, Shoe Palace's $175,000 remodel covered 5,800 square feet across 2024 and 2025, and Perfumania opened after a buildout while American Eagle finished a remodel in May 2026.

Brookfield's retail arm took the GGP name back in January 2026.

In August 2026, the mall trades with Macy's, Macy's Backstage, Dillard's, and H&M. At the far end, a two-level anchor building is being marketed to prospective tenants.

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