Most enclosed malls that opened in the early 1970s have spent the last two decades losing anchors, filling vacancies with trampolines and urgent-care clinics, or simply being torn down. Fashion Place in Murray, UT, has spent the same period demolishing its own buildings on purpose and replacing them with better ones.
It sits on State Street in the middle of the Salt Lake Valley, a regional shopping center that opened in 1972 with four department stores, a cinema, and a supermarket.
The Sears building came down. So did the original Nordstrom box, the original Dillard's box, and two other anchor structures. The footprint of what replaced them is larger than what was there before.
That sequence does not fit the standard narrative of mall decline, and Fashion Place has not particularly tried to fit it.
Fashion Place Mall: Origins and Location in Murray, Utah
Ernest W. Hahn Inc. broke ground on 92 acres in Murray as the Salt Lake Valley pushed outward and defined its suburbs.
The job carried a price tag of roughly $40 million. Leach, Cleveland & Associates of Los Angeles drew up the plans for an enclosed regional mall, with department stores set to anchor the project.
The site took the address 6191 South State Street, along a commercial stretch that moved traffic north into Salt Lake City and south into the valley's expanding suburban edge.
State Street carried the valley's retail traffic, and Fashion Place planted itself directly on that corridor.
Shoppers could reach the property from several approaches. In November 1976, the western section of Interstate 215 opened and widened the mall's regional reach.
The full loop did not close until October 1989. In the years between, the freeway's temporary end sat near the mall.
The original enclosed mall held about 696,000 square feet of leasable space and room for 89 stores. Cottonwood Mall and Valley Fair Mall were already doing business in the valley.
Fashion Place opened after both, with Cottonwood Mall to the northeast and Valley Fair Mall to the northwest, a position that carried weight for decades.
The Opening Days: Anchors, Cinemas, and an Early Supermarket
Auerbach's opened on September 18, 1972, as a two-level department store of about 110,000 square feet, the first anchor through the doors. Twenty-one retail spaces came with it.
Six weeks later, on November 1, Castleton's opened at roughly 26,000 square feet, and the three-level Sears building arrived at about 289,000 square feet, bringing 20 more in-line stores.
Early tenants included Lerner Shops, Wicks 'n Sticks, Noah's Ark Pet Shop, and Chess King.
United Artists Fashion Place IV Cinemas followed on February 16, 1973.
The Broadway came on August 3, 1974, a three-level building of about 180,000 square feet that pushed total leasable space toward 876,000 square feet when combined with a freestanding Smith's Food King supermarket and Skaggs Drug Center.
Four department stores, a cinema, a grocery store, and a pharmacy shared one parking lot.
The mall also became the setting for one of the most consequential criminal cases of the decade. On November 8, 1974, Carol DaRonch walked into Fashion Place to shop.
A man posing as a police officer told her someone had tried to break into her car and persuaded her to come with him.
He handcuffed her. She fought her way out of his car before he could drive far. The man was Ted Bundy. He was convicted of kidnapping her on March 1, 1976.
That same evening, Debra Kent disappeared from Viewmont High School in Bountiful, and a key found near the school later matched DaRonch's handcuffs.
How Fashion Place's Anchor Lineup Changed, 1978-2014
The Broadway was rebranded as Weinstock's on January 30, 1978. Auerbach's became Nordstrom in early 1981, one year after the Seattle chain entered Utah.
Castleton's closed in early 1988. The space reopened on August 3 as ZCMI II, a smaller specialty format from the Utah department-store company ZCMI.
A 1988 renovation updated the interior with new decor, skylights, and a 10-bay food court in the south wing.
Weinstock's closed on December 20, 1992, ending its run at Fashion Place after 14 years. Dillard's moved in with a grand opening on November 9, 1993.
By the early 1990s, three of the four original anchor names had been replaced; Sears remained.
ZCMI II became Meier & Frank on April 18, 2001. On September 9, 2006, Meier & Frank was rebranded as Macy's.
That Macy's closed on January 12, 2014, and The Container Store opened in the fall of 2014, giving Utah its first location of the chain.
The 2000s Redevelopment Plan That Almost Happened, Then Happened Slowly
In May 2000, with The Rouse Company now owning the mall after acquiring TrizecHahn's retail assets in April 1998, plans emerged for a major expansion.
The concept called for a new two-level Nordstrom of about 144,000 square feet, a new Dillard's, and reuse of the freed anchor boxes for additional retailers.
By June 2001, the plan was abandoned.
General Growth Properties acquired Rouse in November 2004 and began the actual work in March 2007.
The Cheesecake Factory opened in November 2007 as the chain's first Utah location, near the Nordstrom entrance with a door facing the parking lot.
The older freestanding supermarket and drugstore building in the northwest lot came down. A new two-level Nordstrom of about 138,000 square feet opened on March 6, 2009.
General Growth filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April 2009.
Contractors and suppliers immediately began pursuing claims over unpaid construction bills involving roofing, cabinetry, asphalt, tile work, and general construction, with millions of dollars in unpaid invoices.
A separate amount was owed to Murray for utility improvements. The property kept operating throughout, and tenants continued signing new leases even as the litigation moved through court.
Fashion Place Mall's Streetscape Expansion and the West-Side Rebuild
In November 2011, two years after the Nordstrom opening and the bankruptcy fallout, the west-side streetscape expansion launched with Crate & Barrel occupying about 29,000 square feet and H&M taking about 23,000 square feet.
Both were the first Utah locations for their respective chains. Brio Tuscan Grille, also new to Utah, opened as part of the same addition.
The addition gave Fashion Place another outward-facing section rather than only inward-facing mall space.
The older Auerbach's and Nordstrom building site became a 98,000-square-foot streetscape section with 17 tenants.
California Pizza Kitchen, Corner Bakery, Red Rock Brewing, Carter's, and The Children's Place filled out the exterior-facing storefronts.
The mall had more than 100 stores and a single vacant space.
The Sears building, which had been part of the mall since November 1972, sat on the south end near Winchester Street and State Street.
Sears Holdings agreed in 2012 to sell the property to General Growth as part of a $270 million multi-store transaction. Sears closed at Fashion Place on July 12, 2013.
The building came down in early 2014. The new Dillard's opened in August 2015, on that same footprint, a flagship-scale store of roughly 200,000 square feet.
Macy's Returns, Dillard's Moves, and the North End Gets Rebuilt
After Dillard's moved to the former Sears site, the northeast building, which had held The Broadway, then Weinstock's, then Dillard's since 1993, was demolished in October 2015.
That cleared the ground for a north-end expansion, adding roughly 50,000 square feet of new retail and restaurant space, two new entrances, updated storefronts, and landscaping.
Macy's returned on March 10, 2017, in a new two-level store of about 160,000 square feet, anchoring the rebuilt north portion of the mall.
The store included a LensCrafters with an in-house optometrist, an engagement-ring department, personal shopping services, and a Macy's Taste Bar Cafe.
Urban Outfitters, BoxLunch, Aerie, Sur La Table, and Forever 21 filled neighboring new spaces. The combined work between 2013 and 2017 involved about $73.5 million in renovations.
Brookfield Property Partners completed its acquisition of General Growth in August 2018. In 2019, a 49 percent interest in the property was sold to the Teacher Retirement System of Texas.
In 2021, Brookfield Property REIT and Teacher Retirement System of Texas secured a $290 million commercial mortgage-backed securities loan on a 632,250-square-foot collateral portion of the mall.
By 2026, the mall's website and leasing materials carried GGP Retail LLC branding.
Pandemic Sales Drop, Parking Lot Incidents, and the Numbers
Fashion Place closed on March 25, 2020, and reopened on May 5, 2020. In-line tenant sales fell from $263 million in 2019 to $158 million in 2020.
By March 2021, in-line sales were about 5 percent below the same month in 2019 overall.
With Apple excluded, however, the figure was more than 11 percent above March 2019, since pandemic operating limits had hit that store's traffic and transaction counts unusually hard.
The retail collateral portion of the mall ran at 93.7 percent occupancy at the end of April 2021.
The trade area within seven miles held more than 681,800 residents and an average household income of about $91,000.
The property's edges stayed active even during that period. The former Applebee's and Taco Bell outparcels were replaced by a Shake Shack in 2020.
In 2021, plans called for demolishing a former Morgan Jewelers outparcel for Via 313 and The Crack Shack.
Public-safety incidents continued during this period. On January 13, 2019, a shooting on the mall's east side injured two people following an argument that began inside.
Two 19-year-old men were arrested on suspicion of attempted aggravated murder, and the mall reopened the following day.
On September 13, 2023, police shot and injured a suspected car thief in the parking lot after a vehicle rammed a police car and crashed into a parked car.
On January 13, 2024, a parking-area confrontation left one person shot in the ankle. Rounds struck vehicles and punched through the east-side glass of The Container Store.
Aritzia, Fogo de Chão, and What Fashion Place Looks Like in 2026
In 2025, Aritzia opened its first Utah boutique at Fashion Place. The interior used marble, white-oak fixtures, textured brick arches, and product lines including Wilfred, Babaton, and The Super Puff.
Fogo de Chão opened its first Utah restaurant at the same mall, adding more than 100 local jobs. On August 25, 2025, Claire's Holdings submitted a revised list of store closures as part of its Delaware Chapter 11 case.
That list names both Icing and Claire's at Fashion Place Mall.
The Fashion Place West TRAX station is near Winchester Street, but the route from the station to the mall entrance crosses a broad auto-oriented area.
Roads, surface parking, and unfinished sidewalk segments stand between the transit stop and the shopping center.
Murray's planning goals for the area included several pedestrian and bicycle improvements, including better crosswalks, bicycle links, and a possible reuse of a water detention area as walkable open space.
The mall's visitor information for the current period listed free parking, no electric-vehicle charging stations, and ride-share pickup locations at the Macy's wing east entrance and the Crate & Barrel wing west entrance.
