Sunland Park Mall Lights Up on Opening Night
On Wednesday evening, August 31, 1988, the west side of El Paso was crowded by 7 p.m. Cars lined the roads near the corner of Interstate 10, Sunland Park Drive, and Mesa Hills Drive.
People made their way to a new two-story building glowing with light. By the end of the night, over 40,000 visitors had entered. Inside, the crowd moved slowly through the corridors.
Visitors looked up at the large skylights and pointed out the plants in the common areas. Families stood close to storefront windows. Teenagers moved through the mall in groups.
Shoppers filled bags with items they had previously driven much farther to buy. Voices carried across the polished floors and high ceilings, and the building stayed loud throughout the evening.
The mall covered 918,500 square feet on two enclosed levels. That made it a super-regional mall, a category used for the largest retail properties.
People arrived that night from Northern Mexico, Southern New Mexico, the Upper Rio Grande Valley, and different areas of West Texas.
It was a shopping center, but it also became a shared place and a well-known spot for the west side of El Paso.
A West Side Dream Years in the Making
The idea for Sunland Park Mall began in 1975. The developer behind El Paso's Cielo Vista Mall proposed a second mall for the city's west side.
From the start, the plan targeted a higher-end market, with a more upscale version of what Cielo Vista already offered.
The site was set at the junction of Interstate 10, Sunland Park Drive, and Mesa Hills Drive, where traffic from several directions could reach it easily.
The project moved slowly through the late 1970s and into the 1980s. It later came together under Melvin Simon & Associates, a company that would go on to become one of the largest mall operators in the world.
When construction was finished, the building was large enough to qualify as a super-regional center under the International Council of Shopping Centers classification.
The location added to the mall's reach. It stood about one mile from Sunland Park Racetrack and Casino, across the state line in Sunland Park, New Mexico, and about four miles from the U.S.-Mexico border.
The site placed it in a corridor between two states and two countries, and that gave it a customer base beyond the west side of El Paso.
The opening-night turnout confirmed the original 1975 plan: the location worked, and the west side was ready.
The Anchors That Defined the Early Years
Sunland Park Mall opened in 1988 with several major anchor stores already in place. Dillard's opened with the mall, along with The Popular Dry Goods and Mervyn's.
JCPenney followed in 1991, Montgomery Ward opened in 1992, and Sears joined in 1996.
For most of the 1990s, the mall had a full anchor lineup, and the corridors between those larger stores stayed filled with smaller specialty retailers.
However, the anchor mix changed often. The Popular Dry Goods closed in 1995, and Sears moved into that space.
Montgomery Ward closed in 1999, and Dillard's expanded into that building in 2000 to open a separate men's store.
JCPenney left in 2004, and Foley's took its place. In 2006, Foley's store became a Macy's. Mervyn's closed in 2008, and Forever 21 moved into part of that space in 2009.
Even with those changes, the mall kept the same role on the west side. Shoppers from that period remember movie theater visits, food court trips, and busy Saturdays inside the building.
Store names changed over time, but the mall remained a regular part of local routines and later became part of people's memories.
The Wurlitzer Organ's Unusual Home at the Mall
Not everything inside Sunland Park Mall involved shopping. During the years when El Paso's historic Plaza Theatre was closed for renovation, the mall housed one of the city's distinctive cultural objects.
It was the Mighty Wurlitzer theater organ that had originally been installed in the Plaza.
The organ was returned to El Paso from a collector in Dallas, Texas. It was then set up inside the mall while the Plaza went through its long restoration.
A theater organ in a shopping center was an unusual setup, but the mall had become more than a row of stores for the surrounding community.
The building was a place where people gathered for events and connected as a community. Its organ also tied it directly to El Paso's history of performances.
The arrangement was temporary from the beginning. When the Plaza Theatre finished its renovation and reopened in 2006, the Wurlitzer returned to its original home.
Ownership Changes and a Long Decline
Sunland Park Mall was originally operated by Simon Property Group, one of the largest mall management companies in the world.
In 2014, ownership moved to Washington Prime Group, a real estate trust Simon created to hold some of its lower-performing properties.
After that change, Sunland Park received less investment money than Simon's top-tier malls, and the effects became clear over time.
The anchor stores closed one after another. Macy's closed in 2017. Forever 21 closed in 2018. Sears shut down in early 2019 as part of a nationwide plan to close 40 stores.
In 2022, the second Dillard's store, the men's store that had operated since 2000, merged back into the main Dillard's location. That change removed another anchor store.
Washington Prime Group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2021. After that, the company could no longer fund major improvements at its properties. Tenant departures sped up, and the mall had little chance to recover.
By then, most of the big national stores that shaped the mall's first twenty years were gone. The spaces they left sat empty.
Corridors that had once been crowded on busy weekends became quiet. This happened in malls everywhere, but it was still tough for anyone who remembered what Sunland Park Mall used to be.
Enoch Kimmelman Buys and Renames the Mall
In July 2023, the mall got a new owner. Enoch Kimmelman, the president and CEO of Starr Western Wear, bought most of the property from Washington Prime Group.
The deal covered the interior retail space and the building's common areas, but not the large anchor spaces, which are owned separately by the anchor tenants.
Kimmelman already had a long connection to the mall. Starr Western Wear was founded by his parents about 60 years earlier in downtown El Paso.
In 2018, he bought the former Macy's space at the mall and opened a third Starr Western Wear location there.
That earlier purchase put him inside the property before he bought most of the rest of the building.
After the purchase, he renamed the mall The Shoppes at Solana.
The name came from "solana," a Spanish word meaning sunroom, and it referred to the large skylights that caught the attention of the first people who visited in 1988.
The mall's website and web address changed in August 2023. The purchase price was not shared with the public.
Kimmelman's plans included a new main entrance, redesigned interior spaces, and a new mix of retailers, restaurants, and entertainment.
He called for a "Main Street feel," with outdoor-style cafes and businesses that would give visitors a reason to stay longer than it takes to buy something.
New Tenants, New Events, and the Road to Recovery
Work to rebuild the mall began before the ownership change. In 2021, twelve new businesses moved into the building, and many of them were local.
The COVID-19 pandemic led some national retailers to leave, but it also made the mall's lower rents more attractive to smaller business owners.
New tenants began filling empty spaces. The Makers Collaborative, a craft store that supports around 30 local artists, found steady foot traffic after it opened.
The food court added Kyo Kai Boba, Hot Joe's Meal Prep, and I Heart Sugar. Fitness studios and a live-music lounge moved into spaces that national chains had left.
Foot traffic increased about 30 percent year over year.
The mall added community features, including a volleyball court, an activity corner with oversized chess sets and electric animal cruisers, and a Book Nook reading area.
Jungle Reef became one of the mall's new main attractions when the Hepworth brothers built an interactive aquarium in the old Old Navy store at The Solana.
Construction started on May 1, 2023, and the grand opening was held from February 9 to 11, 2024.
The project added a 27,000-square-foot space with hands-on animal displays, including sharks, stingrays, otters, reptiles, and birds, and it now operates as part of the mall's newer mix of fun activities and shopping.
In 2025, Union Fashion, a designer clothing store that had closed in 2015, reopened on the lower level.
In February 2026, Paranormal Cirque came back to The Shoppes at Solana and put on shows in the parking lot for four nights, from February 20 to February 23.
The mall also became a regular site for school events, fundraisers, pop-up markets, pageants, and community gatherings.
It is still not clear whether these changes will lead to a long-term recovery, but the building is busy again and used regularly on the west side of El Paso.
