Lakeline Mall is a two-level enclosed mall on Lakeline Mall Drive in Cedar Park, Texas, and it finished 2025 at 96.9 percent occupancy. The corridors are close to full.
The mall opened in October 1995 with five department stores, and two of those buildings are empty now. Sears left in 2018 and nothing has replaced it. The other one stopped trading as a Dillard's this year.
Austin came back to the area in August 2026. The council passed a resolution on the land around Lakeline Station, so city staff now have to approach the mall's owner about possible PUD amendments and study reuse of older commercial property and surface parking.
The mall is open seven days a week and the food court still runs on the upper level. No owner plan has been filed in response, and the two department-store buildings are still empty.
The mall that stayed on paper
Simon had the Lakeline tract by 1984, and by November 16, 1985, the plans were public: a regional shopping mall roughly the size of Barton Creek Square, with construction due to start in late 1986.
Nothing started.
Central Texas real estate went into a severe downturn during the savings-and-loan crisis, and the mall site stayed undeveloped through the rest of the decade.
The mall existed as a drawing. The parkland dedication didn't wait for it.
In 1987 Austin acquired 10.5 acres at 2701 South Lakeline Boulevard through dedication tied to the Lakeline Mall development, so a piece of the project passed to the city while the rest of it was still open ground.
There was no mall to dedicate it from, and the late-1986 construction date had already passed.
The caves under the Lakeline tract
The ground under the tract was karst, and the caves in it were occupied.
Lakeline Cave, Underline Cave, and a point on the plans called Well Trap location No. 6 sat in the expected impact area, and two of the species living in that kind of habitat, the Bee Creek Cave harvestman and the Tooth Cave ground beetle, were federally protected.
Nothing could be built over them without federal authorization to harm them.
Federal notice of that application appeared in October 1991.
The habitat conservation plan it produced took effect on February 13, 1992, covering 116 acres for a regional mall, other commercial development, and parking.
The permit ran to February 13, 2022. Authorization came with a bill attached.
The mitigation program required the developer to buy preserve land and manage it, put up a management annuity, contribute to the regional Balcones Canyonlands program, build an educational karst exhibit, and control fire ants in the preserve areas.
Clearing the tract was allowed on the condition that other karst land was bought and kept.
So the mall could be built. What it owed didn't end when the building did.
Lakeline Mall opened October 18, 1995
Austin spent the last months before the opening working on the roads in.
On May 3, 1995, the council approved a $44,250 contract for 50 street-light poles to light the roadways leading to the mall at US 183 and Ranch Road 620.
On September 14 it changed the name of Lakestop Boulevard to Lakeline Mall Drive, about 3,800 feet of it, running southwest from a point roughly 600 feet east of North Lake Creek Parkway to the end of the right-of-way.
The requester paid the processing and sign costs.
Between those two council actions, the state took something off the table.
Legislation effective September 1, 1995 restricted Austin's power to deny, limit, delay, or condition development in the affected area because of traffic effects.
For covered projects no traffic impact analysis was required, and traffic couldn't be used as a condition of approval.
Right-of-way dedication could still be required.
Lakeline Mall opened on Wednesday, October 18, 1995: a two-level enclosed regional mall at 11200 Lakeline Mall Drive, with a Cedar Park mailing address, inside Austin City Council District 6 in Williamson County.
It came in at about 1.103 million square feet, with Dillard's, Foley's, Sears, JCPenney, and Mervyn's.
It's open today, advertising more than 120 stores, with Dillard's, Macy's, JCPenney, and AMC Theatres as its major tenants.
Preserve land, and a rule Austin couldn't repeal
The mitigation land didn't stay where it started.
On May 30 and 31, 2001, Texas Parks and Wildlife approved the transfer of about 26 acres known as the Testudo Tube Cave Preserve to the City of Austin, and about 106 acres known as the Godwin Ranch Cave Preserve to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at Lake Georgetown.
The Plan Operator duties connected to the Lakeline Mall mitigation moved with the acreage.
Six years after the mall opened, its conservation work belonged to a city and to a federal agency running a reservoir 20 miles away, and federal wildlife rules in 2013 still required Testudo Tube Cave to be protected and managed in perpetuity.
The traffic restriction held just as well.
City project reviews in the area said outright that no traffic impact analysis was required and that traffic effects couldn't be used as grounds for a condition.
On March 28, 2019, Austin backed a state effort to repeal it, 24 years after it took effect.
The repeal didn't happen, and the restriction was still part of the city's legal picture when Austin came back to the area seven years later.
Two of the five anchors are gone
Two of the five department stores that opened the mall aren't operating.
Mervyn's announced in September 2005 that it was closing its Central Texas stores, and by 2006 it was off Simon's Lakeline anchor list.
Dillard's took the building in 2007 and ran it as a separate Men's and Children's store, which gave the mall two Dillard's operations.
Foley's became Macy's in 2006 and is still trading. Sears left differently.
It announced on May 31, 2018 that the Lakeline store would close in early September, and by 2020 the building had been on the market for about a year.
No permanent anchor has replaced it. The second Dillard's had stopped operating by this year, which leaves two department-store buildings without a permanent anchor.
At the same time, the inline mall finished 2025 at 96.9 percent occupancy and advertised more than 120 stores this September.
A park in June, a resolution in August
Ridgeline Neighborhood Park held its ribbon cutting on June 3, 2026.
It sits on the 10.5 acres Austin took out of the mall project in 1987, and it took 39 years to become a developed public park: a loop trail, picnic areas, a drinking fountain, native grass and wildflower plantings, and protected forest, wetland, and stream areas.
The concept plan had been approved in the summer of 2022 and construction finished this year.
Twelve weeks later the city started on the rest of it.
On August 27, 2026, the council approved a resolution covering the area around Lakeline Station.
Save Our Springs Alliance opposed the item at the meeting. It passed on the consent agenda anyway.
The resolution directs staff to make formal contact with the owner of Lakeline Mall about possible PUD amendments, and to study reuse of aging commercial property and surface parking within two miles of the station for housing, jobs, civic space, and mixed use.
It approves no demolition and no design. No owner has filed anything in response.
On Saturday mornings that parking holds the farmers market, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., over by the AMC side of the building.
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