I must have visited my sister at least a dozen times when she was living in the Fort Walton Beach area while stationed at Eglin Air Force Base. We made side treks to the town of Seaside, the planned community where The Truman Show was filmed, as well as to Pensacola Beach, over an hour away. But, during those many visits, we may have gone to the city's only enclosed shopping center, Santa Rosa Mall, once or twice.
Santa Rosa Mall Mallmanac ca. 2000. View the full PDF version here.
Santa Rosa Mall was fairly unremarkable and pretty much followed the standard for a late 1990s and early 2000s enclosed facility. In fact, I don't remember much about the place. It really must not have been unique in any way or have made that much of an impression on me. The complex opened in 1976 with three anchors, Sears, JCPenney and Gayfer's. A new wing and a fourth anchor, McRae's, was added in 1984. Since then, there haven't been a whole lot of changes except for McRae's becoming a Belk while Gayfer's was taken over by Dillard's, leaving the mall with the same four department stores found at most mid-size market malls in the southeast. But at least they had mallmanacs.
L- Santa Rosa Mall at its opening. R- Santa Rosa Mall as of this writing.
Since my last visit in 2004, there has been a building boom of new retail facilities in Okaloosa County, most of them open-air to capitalize on the region's sub-tropical climate. All of these are filled with businesses aimed at the many vacationers who make their way to the Emerald Coast each year. Santa Rosa Mall, containing nothing distinguishing itself from any other mall in the region, fills the needs of the local population fairly well, but not much else. But, yeah, at least they had mallmanacs.
Since your last visit, the Belk's wing past the food court has been completely abandoned. There are no stores past 55 or 56 on the 2000 directory. Belk's shuttered a few years ago. There are also a number of stores that shuttered in the Old Navy wing as well. I think what it is people are driving to Destin to go to the Destin Commons. It's a fairly good sized outdoor complex with a lot more to offer. It's sad to see malls like this one start declining over an outdoor complex. I would choose to be inside rather than out. Weather being the main factor.
ReplyDeleteI agree, inside is so much better. And it seems like the Commons isn’t doing well either.
DeleteUpdate.....Sadly there is practically no mall here anymore. No food court and maybe 6-8 stores.
ReplyDeleteI don’t think this mall is going to be here much longer. The only thing keeping it alive is the Planet Fitness. I give it two years. It’s sad, there’s nothing to do in Fort Walton.
ReplyDeleteResearching the history of the mall (specifically, trying to figure out why it was named Santa Rosa Mall), came across your page. Thought I'd update the substantial changes to the mall in the last few years.
ReplyDeleteThe mall all but died after Sears, JCPenney's, and Dillards closed. More and more of the regular mall chains started closing as well. The food court lost almost every mall chain brand, and was manned by a few local restaurants that came and went just as fast.
As of TODAY, the mall has more it less reverted back to it's original layout; the McRae's building (later Belk, and finally Macy's before closing for good) and part of that wing built with it has been demolished and replaced with a "luxury" apartment/townhome complex that isn't physically attached to the mall. The closest thing we have to an anchor store now is Old Navy and Planet Fitness; pretty much all of the other occupied units are now local businesses. The theater is still there and open. The JCPenney's building has been used for both a haunted house and a spirit Halloween store. The Sears building has been turned into a mini storage factory. Dillard's building is still there, but vacant and appears to be used for random storage.
They don't have any plans to close the mall from what I understand, but honestly it wouldn't be a big shock if it was announced tomorrow that it was closing for good. Sad that it declined so far; I remember how busy it was when I was younger, and then all the time I spent there as a teenager with friends in the early 2000's, but that's when it started it's decline. I couldn't really tell you why it happened, but the environment just got worse and worse (fights, groups of people walking around causing problems with everyone and stores, etc.) got to the point where it wasn't worth going anymore. For me, that was especially true after the arcade shifted their focus to younger kids and got rid of the games a lot of us were going there to play as teens.