West Park Mall

West Park Mall

Entrance to West Park Mall, May 2012
Coordinates	37°17′53″N 89°34′14″W / 37.29799°N 89.57055°W / 37.29799; -89.57055Coordinates: 37°17′53″N 89°34′14″W / 37.29799°N 89.57055°W / 37.29799; -89.57055
Opening date	1981
Developer	Partnership Between Drury Development Corp. & May Centers, Inc.
Management	CBL Properties
Owner
No. of stores and services	60+
No. of anchor tenants	5 (4 open, 1 vacant)
Total retail floor area	507,555 sq ft (47,153.4 m2)[1]
No. of floors	1

West Park Mall is an enclosed shopping mall in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Opened in 1981, it is anchored by JCPenney (100,466 sq ft (9,333.6 m²)), Ashley HomeStore (80,710 sq ft (7,498 m²)), Old Navy, and Barnes & Noble.

History[]

The mall was built in 1981 by a partnership between St. Louis-based May Centers, Inc., and Cape Girardeau-based Drury Development Corp., developer of the Drury Hotel Chain,^[2][3] It featured Famous-Barr (later Macy's) and JCPenney as its anchor stores, with original tenants including Hallmark Cards, Foot Locker, Kay-Bee Toys, Claire's, Zales Jewelers, GNC, Waldenbooks, and Lerner New York.^[4] An 80,000-square-foot (7,400 m²) Venture was added as a third anchor in 1984.^[5] Westfield Group bought the mall from CenterMark in 1993, and renamed it Westfield Shoppingtown West Park in 1998.^[6]

The Venture store closed in 1998, the same year in which the mall owners proposed adding a fourth anchor store.^[7] The West Park Mall Venture store and another at Kentucky Oaks Mall in nearby Paducah, Kentucky both became Shopko in 1999,^[8][9] bringing West Park to 100 percent occupancy for the first time in its history.^[10] Shopko closed in 2001.^[11]

Old Navy opened in the mall in 2004.^[12] A year later, the former Venture and Shopko space became Steve & Barry's.^[13] In 2006, Westfield sold the mall to Centro Watt (which in 2011 rebranded as Brixmor Property Group), who reverted it to its original name.^[14] Barnes & Noble was also added.^[15]

Several stores closed in the mall between 2008 and 2010, including Steve & Barry's, Pacific Sunwear, Tilt, (a video arcade that was originally called "The Gold Mine" in the 1980s,) and a restaurant which had been at the mall for 24 years. Despite these vacancies, the mall was 88 percent occupied in 2010, with several of its original stores still in operation.^[16] Brixmor hired Madison Marquette to be the manager of the mall in mid-2012.^[17]

Ashley Furniture opened in 2018 in the former Venture building.

On January 5, 2021, it was announced that Macy's would be closing as part of a plan to close 46 stores nationwide. The store closed on March 21, 2021.^[18]

References[]

External links[]

• Official website