University Mall, Tuscaloosa, AL

An extant asset

Tuscaloosa is Alabama's fifth largest municipality and serves as the home of the main campus of University of Alabama. Along with this notoriety comes droves of the most passionate, crazed and obsessed football fans in the world.

University Mall Mallmanac ca. 2000. View the full PDF version here.

The entire town seems to revolve around the 101,821 seat Bryant-Denny Stadium, home of the Crimson Tide. Everything else in the small west Alabama city is secondary to this institution, including the insignificant yet adequate University Mall.

-UPDATE-  1- The old school mall entrance.  (Source)  2- The present University Mall entrance.  (Source)  3- The now vacant Sears entrance.  (Source)  4- University Mall from above.  (Source)

I always liked visiting Tuscaloosa when I lived in Alabama.  It wasn’t that long of a drive and taking the back roads home through the Bankhead National Forest provided some gorgeous scenery.  The city had a nice downtown, a major college campus and the University Mall.

-UPDATE-  University Mall pamphlet ca. 2010. View the full PDF version here.

The most striking feature of University Mall is the handsome crimson brick covering the façade, an appropriate choice considering the location.  Inside of these walls was the retail fare one would expect to find in a college town.  Altogether, I liked visiting the place and always made sure to on my many visits.

-UPDATE-  University Mall pamphlet ca. 2015. View the full PDF version here.

University Mall opened in 1980 as west Alabama's largest enclosed mall, exceeding the community's older facility, MacFarland Mall. It was designed in the shape of a cross with an anchor bookending each of the four corridors. These original anchors included Sears, JCPenney, Parisian and Pizitz.

-UPDATE-  1- University Mall center court.  (Source)  2- A fountain in front of JCPenney.  (Source)  3- Christmas time in the mall.  (Source)  4- Inside the main concourse.  (Source)

Before long, Pizitz was bought out by McRae's with the Jackson, Mississippi based retailer becoming the fourth anchor. They later became Belk when Saks sold their mid-market division to the Charlotte-based chain, followed by their opening a second location in the old Parisian space when they purchased that division as well.

-UPDATE-  University Mall pamphlet ca. 2019. View the full PDF version here.

As pretty much the only enclosed shopping venue in the college town, its success and dominance goes unchallenged, at least by manmade factors.  The infamous and well documented major tornado of April 27, 2011, barely missed the red brick institution, and University Mall survived with only moderate damage. Unfortunately, 64 people weren’t so lucky.

-UPDATE-  University Mall Mallmanac ca. 2023. View the full PDF version here.

Most importantly, no one in the building was hurt, which is of the utmost importance.  Fortuitously, the complex was left standing and structurally sound. Had it been irreparably damaged, considering the size of the market and today's retail trends, the replacement would have surely been neither traditional nor enclosed in nature.

(Source)

University Mall official website