Mall of Abilene is a one-level enclosed mall on Buffalo Gap Road on the south side of Abilene, Texas. It has two Dillard's stores. Both are in the building that opened in 1979.
The mall opened with five department stores planned and four of them trading. One of the four was H. J. Wilson Co. That store became Service Merchandise, and its building later became the second Dillard's.
Grissom's went the same way. It became Dunlaps and left for Catclaw Drive in 2004, so the anchor it emptied was divided among smaller tenants instead of being replaced.
Today the mall has a public library branch in more than 20,000 square feet of former retail space, along with a radio station. Sears closed in 2019. Its building is now the Hendrick Health Service Center.
Mall of Abilene opened with one anchor missing
Luby's got there first.
The cafeteria opened on March 7, 1979, a week before the mall it sat in, with about 10,000 square feet and a dining room that seated 290.
Mall of Abilene followed on Wednesday, March 14, an enclosed regional shopping center at 4310 Buffalo Gap Road on the south side of Abilene, Texas, one level, with interior trees, flowers, fountains, and daylight coming in overhead.
It's still trading there in 2026. Advertised hours at the opening were 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., Monday through Saturday.
The opening promotion said 90 shops.
The map that survives from that week names 81 and puts each one in a unit: a cinema, a Waldenbooks, an El Chico, and a long row of shoe, apparel, and jewelry stores.
Five department stores were named in the opening program: Dillard's, JCPenney, H. J. Wilson Co., Grissom's, and Sears. Four of them opened.
Sears was printed on the pre-opening map and ran in the opening advertising with coming soon beside its name, and it didn't trade until a few months after everyone else.
The Wilson's box changed names twice
H. J. Wilson Co. kept its anchor for six years.
In 1985 the store became Service Merchandise, and when that ended the building took a third occupant: Dillard's, which was already trading at the other end of the same mall.
That's how one mall ended up with two stores under one name, and it still has them.
The pair aren't the same size. By 2005 the original Dillard's measured 99,800 square feet and the converted Wilson's building 63,400.
The directory separates them as the women's store and the men's store, and since the mall has no food court, most of its food sits near the men's one.
The building never changed shape through any of it.
Dunlaps left and its anchor was split
Grissom's opened the mall's fourth anchor and changed its name to Dunlaps in 1987.
The store was sold in 2004, and Dunlaps moved out to Catclaw Drive, where an open-air power center had just gone up two miles north of the mall.
Its anchor space then went to several tenants at once.
Best Buy was trading on that side by 2005 in a separately owned unit, and Books-A-Million was next to it by 2008.
You can shop either one without entering the mall at all: each has an outside door as well as one into the corridor.
Together they occupy about 40,100 square feet in the one-story property adjoining the mall. Ulta took the old Luby's area on the same side.
The fourth anchor became several stores, each with its own way in.
A fifth of the leasable space sat empty
Dividing the anchor didn't fill the rest of the building.
On March 31, 2005, 71,100 square feet of the mall's financed retail core was vacant, 21.3 percent of the 333,600 square feet in it.
That empty footage sat in the mall-controlled core.
Sears, both Dillard's stores, and Best Buy were separately owned and counted outside it; JCPenney was inside.
The money that year went into the parts everyone walks through.
In 2005 the work was on the common areas. A year later came a 1,100-square-foot children's play area.
It's still there in 2026, in the JCPenney courtyard, under the name Jungle Adventure, for children 42 inches and under, with food, drinks, and strollers kept outside the enclosure.
A public library moved into Mall of Abilene
The city's South Branch library had about 5,600 square feet in a leased storefront on South Danville, and the lease ran out on July 31, 2015.
The city went looking for something larger, two proposals came back, and the one it took was a suite inside Mall of Abilene.
The City Council approved the move on July 10, 2015.
The Friends of the Abilene Public Library had pledged $500,000 toward it the month before, and the build-out was budgeted at about $1.3 million.
The branch opened in 2016 with more than 20,000 square feet.
Inside are a children's area, three reservable study rooms, a public computer lab, adult and youth collections, and a meeting room with a kitchenette and presentation equipment.
One door opens to the mall corridor and another to the parking lot. A lactation lounge was added in December 2025.
In 2017, its first full year in the building, the branch recorded 271,000 visits.
It keeps its own hours, opens seven days a week, and runs until 9 p.m. on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, which the mall doesn't do.
Sears closed and Hendrick took over the building
Sears arrived a few months late in 1979 and grew into the largest store in the mall: 142,600 square feet on two levels, the only two-level building on a one-level site.
On December 28, 2018, the company put the Abilene store into a national group of closings, and it shut in March 2019.
The mall turned 40 that same month. Its March 14 program was billed as a two-hour afternoon gathering in the Men's Dillard's courtyard.
Original tenants were due to speak, with music, refreshments, and a Chamber of Commerce ribbon-cutting around them.
Two years after Sears closed, Hendrick Health announced that it had bought the building for a shared service center.
In 2026 the Hendrick Health Service Center is in the mall directory. The old Sears box did get a successor.
Two of the mall's 1979 tenants were gone by 2026
Coastal Cookies closed on September 28, 2024, after 45 years in the same mall.
A year and a half later El Chico went too, on April 20, 2026, ending a 47-year run and taking one of the last opening-day food tenants with it.
Ari's Cafe closed the same day, and Chuck E. Cheese had already gone that month.
The Ari's and Chuck E. Cheese spaces didn't stay shut for long.
Moot Moot Asian Food & Drinks Garden opened in the former Ari's suite in June 2026, and by late August, Spirit Halloween had the old Chuck E. Cheese unit for the season, across the corridor from Ulta.
Money went into the tenants who stayed, too.
JD Sports rebuilt 7,000 square feet across 2023 and 2024 at a cost of $1.1 million, and Ulta spent $480,000 on a 10,900-square-foot interior remodel over September and October 2025.
The mall's own website still names El Chico as one of its entrances.
Regular hours are now 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon to 6 p.m. on Sunday.
The library runs seven days. Sears has been off the directory since 2019.
The walking circuit inside runs three-quarters of a mile, and on weekday mornings the doors open at 7:30 for the walkers, three and a half hours before regular mall hours begin.
Independent Publisher Notice
BestAttractions is an independent editorial publisher. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of any location, business, property owner, manager, government agency, or organization described in this article.
Comments posted on this page are not forwarded to, reviewed by, or acted upon by any entity mentioned in the article.
For official inquiries, complaints, applications, bookings, or other requests, please contact the relevant entity directly through its official website or other verified channels.