Mall del Norte in Laredo, TX: The 1970s Mall That Kept Getting Bigger While the Rest Emptied Out

Mall del Norte is the enclosed shopping mall at 5300 San Dario Avenue in Laredo, Texas, a mile east of the Rio Grande and right off Interstate 35.

If you shopped there before 1996, you knew it by different signs. Hachar's on two levels. Richter's at the small end. Joe Brand somewhere in the middle, where it stayed for 40 years.

It opened in July 1977, and by its formal grand opening in August it had 735,000 square feet and 56 stores.

A northeast wing built between 1993 and 1995 grew it by more than half. Montgomery Ward closed in 2001, Mervyn's in 2008, Bealls and Sears in 2020.

Three of those buildings became a movie theater, an entertainment center with bowling, and a furniture store. The gym replaced Joe Brand.

Sears opened as one of the mall's original anchors and closed 43 years later. A furniture company now sells sofas under a mural of the Rio Grande painted by local schoolkids.

Most of the department stores that made this mall worth building are gone, and the mall still logged an estimated 6.4 million visits last year. Here's how that happened.

Mall del Norte opens on 90 acres in 1977

In 1975 a New York partnership was assembling 90 acres of land 2.6 miles north of downtown Laredo, past the edge of the city's old shopping district, along the northbound route of Interstate 35.

Mall del Norte is the enclosed shopping mall that went up on that ground, at 5300 San Dario Avenue near Hillside Road, one mile east of the Rio Grande and the Mexican border.

Getting it built meant signing department stores, and Sears and Hachar's wanted opposite deals. Sears refused to rent.

It bought its own parcel inside the site, built its own store, and signed a separate agreement with the developers covering the shared parking and doors.

Hachar's, a Laredo department store, took a lease instead, signing on September 24, 1975. The developers countersigned on January 21, 1976.

The lease promised Hachar's that no other mall tenant would pay a lower maintenance rate per square foot.

A Dallas architect named William Graves drew the place as one long air-conditioned corridor with the big stores set around the outside and small shops facing in.

Shoppers came through the doors in July 1977. The formal grand opening was August 10: 735,000 square feet, 56 stores and services.

Sears opened with 93,900 square feet on one floor. Richter's, another Laredo store, took 30,700. Dillard's opened September 29 with 86,000.

Hachar's followed on April 30, 1978, two levels and 112,700 square feet, and Montgomery Ward opened that year with 109,700.

Along the concourse: Bealls, Zales, County Seat, GNC, Mac's Toys, Chick-fil-A, and Joe Brand, a Laredo clothier. United Artists ran a four-screen theater inside called Cinema Del Norte.

Half the sales came from across the river

Laredo already had a mall. River Drive Mall opened downtown in 1970, the city's first.

The new center up on the interstate pulled the department stores and the national chains north, and the shopping trade followed them out of downtown.

A mall that size in a city that size depended heavily on customers who weren't American.

From the late 1970s through 2001, Mexican shoppers accounted for an estimated 51 percent of Laredo retail sales, a bigger share than McAllen, Brownsville, or El Paso.

Cross-border shopping supported an estimated 17 percent of the jobs in Webb County. Monterrey is 143 miles away.

Sales rose and fell with the peso and with the ease of crossing the bridges, which meant a peso devaluation in Mexico could show up in the parking lot at San Dario and Hillside.

By 1998 Mall del Norte was the only super-regional shopping center within a 140-mile radius.

Hotels, banks, restaurants, and automotive businesses filled in the I-35 frontage around it, and the stretch from Del Mar Boulevard to Calton Road became the city's main commercial corridor.

Santa Claus, a leaky roof, and a lawsuit

Under its lease, Hachar's paid a share of the mall's common-area upkeep based on how much floor space it occupied.

Rider 12.21 said that if the mall ever gave another mall tenant a cheaper basic rate per square foot, Hachar's got that rate too.

The store had other complaints. The roof leaked. A kiosk became another fight. And it objected to where the mall was setting up its seasonal Santa Claus and Easter Bunny displays.

In February 1987 Hachar's paid $144,500 for 1984 and 1985 taxes and 1985 common-area costs. The same agreement settled the older fights over the roof, a kiosk, and the holiday displays.

Two months later a bill arrived for the 1986 operating year. Hachar's audited it and found that Dillard's had been charged less.

The suit was filed in February 1988.

The trial court found a breach of contract and a violation of the state's deceptive trade practices law, and awarded $3.1 million in damages plus $200,000 in attorney's fees for the trial.

On June 17, 1992, the appeals court in San Antonio threw out the deceptive trade practices finding and cut the actual damages to the agreed overcharge amount: $312,500, plus interest and legal fees.

Hachar's had also argued it deserved Montgomery Ward's rate, but Ward owned its own ground, the way Sears did, and wasn't a "Mall Tenant" under the lease.

The wing that added 445,600 square feet

The mall got its first interior face-lift in 1991. The old small cinema space may have become a nine-bay food court.

Then came the real change. Between 1993 and 1995 the owners built a northeast wing onto the back of the property: 445,600 square feet of leasable space and 22 new inline stores.

Dillard's walked out of the 86,000-square-foot building it had opened in 1977 and into a two-level store of 153,600 square feet on March 9, 1994.

JCPenney was dedicated on March 25, 1995, also two levels, 126,200 square feet.

In 18 years Mall del Norte had gone from 735,000 square feet and 56 storefronts to 1,180,600 square feet and 125.

The old Dillard's got cut into six units, with Mervyn's taking the largest piece. The corridor stopped being a straight line.

Dillard's and JCPenney owned their new buildings outright, the same arrangement Sears had insisted on back in 1975.

That is why the mall's reported size still depends on who is counting and what they choose to include.

When the local names came off the buildings

Hachar's had been a Laredo name since long before the mall existed. In 1996 it became Foley's. Richter's old building became Foley's Home Store the same year.

Montgomery Ward closed in March 2001, part of the chain's national liquidation, leaving 109,700 square feet empty at one end of the property.

CBL & Associates bought Mall del Norte on November 22, 2004 for $170.4 million in cash including costs, borrowing $113.4 million of it at 5 percent. The appraisal came in at $174 million.

Here is what that money was buying.

Annual sales figures put Dillard's at $32 million, the two Foley's stores together at $30 million, Sears at $28 million, JCPenney at $19 million, Mervyn's at $13.6 million, and Bealls at $8.3 million.

Joe Brand, still there from opening day, held 29,400 square feet of the concourse.

The new owner added an outside entrance at the food court and expanded Bealls by 10,800 square feet.

Then on September 9, 2006, the Foley's sign and the Foley's Home sign both came down and Macy's went up on both.

Two department stores that had opened in 1977 and 1978 with Laredo families' names on them were now one national brand.

Sixteen screens in the old Ward building

The empty 109,700-square-foot Ward building got carved into pieces.

Circuit City opened in a 21,800-square-foot slice in February 2006. Kool Smiles, a dental practice, took another.

The biggest piece went to Cinemark, which opened a 16-screen theater there on June 27, 2007, 30 years after the mall opened with a two-screen one.

Circuit City lasted three years and closed in March 2009 when the chain went under nationally.

Mervyn's closed in December 2008 after 14 years in the old Dillard's box. Forever 21 moved into the space in March 2009.

Sears, meanwhile, went the other direction and added 31,900 square feet, bringing its store to 125,800.

In January 2012 the owner put Mall del Norte into a four-mall renovation program meant to finish work started back in 2007, with a deadline of the end of that year.

It was the mall's last announced broad common-area job. The later projects centered on individual stores and old anchor boxes.

Two anchors gone in four months

Joe Brand left in 2018, after 40 years. It had opened with the mall in 1977 and outlasted Montgomery Ward, Mervyn's, and Foley's. TruFit Athletic Club opened in the space on May 30, 2019.

Forever 21 closed that January and came back smaller, dropping from 81,300 square feet to 19,400.

Main Event took the other 61,800 and opened on February 16, 2020 with 20 bowling lanes, more than 100 arcade games, laser tag, mini golf, and a restaurant.

The construction permit was valued at $5 million, the company said the center would bring more than 150 jobs, and company leaders called it the largest Main Event constructed to that point.

Then came the rest of 2020. Bealls closed in May. Sears was gone by the end of August, 43 years after it put up its own store on its own land.

Between the two of them, 163,000 square feet went empty within four months.

On November 1, 2020, CBL filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Word went around Laredo that December that the mall was closing or being sold. Management said it wasn't, and the doors stayed open.

A year later to the day, the reorganization took effect and cleared more than $1.6 billion in debt and preferred obligations off the company. It kept Mall del Norte.

A mural of the Rio Grande inside Sears

The Sears building sat empty for three and a half years. In early April 2024, Mega Furniture opened inside it.

Students from Harmony School of Excellence, working with their art teacher, painted a mural for the store using native plants, animals, and the river running a mile to the west.

The shell stayed. The merchandise changed.

2025 was a hard year for the smaller stores. Guess closed on March 25. Forever 21 closed for good in April. Claire's closed in August after its parent company filed for bankruptcy.

New tenants kept arriving anyway. Miss A, a cosmetics chain, renovated the 4,800-square-foot Guess unit in a project estimated at $275,000.

Huddle House opened a diner. James Avery built a second Laredo location.

A local couple opened We Rock the Spectrum near Dillard's, a children's gym with 12 pieces of sensory equipment for kids with different physical and sensory needs.

Shoe Palace took over the old Casa Raul Westernwear space beside JCPenney.

As of July 2026, Mall del Norte has 167 stores and 1.2 million square feet, with Dillard's, Macy's, Macy's Home Store, and JCPenney still anchoring it.

Occupancy was 93 percent at the end of 2024, and the mall shops did $432 per square foot. Visits in 2025 came to 6.4 million. No demolition has been announced for the property.

Barnes & Noble is finishing a 19,100-square-foot store with a cafe between the bowling alley and the gym, with the doors set to open in September.

On a Saturday the lot fills with cars from Webb County and from across the bridges, and the people walking in are headed for a movie, a bowling lane, or a workout.

Starting in September, they'll also have Laredo's first Barnes & Noble.