Northgate Mall, Durham, NC

A dead mall

-UPDATE BELOW-

26 December 2021

We did a lot of road tripping as a family during the late eighties and early nineties. As I mentioned before, one of our most traveled routings, especially during holiday periods, took us from Norfolk, Virginia to Huntsville, Alabama then to Orlando, Florida. While most of the hours were defined by endless stretches of greenery streaming by at 65 miles per hour, it was all worth it to pass through all of those medium and large cities punctuating the maps. And, on the southbound, one of the first we always passed was Durham, North Carolina.

Northgate Shopping Center not long after its opening. (Source)

Unfortunately for me, though I’m sure my dad and his sense of urgency would argue, we never penetrated too far into the urban core as Interstate 85 merely skirted the northern edge of Durham. But there, at the interchange with US 501, was all I needed. It was a low slung, beige cinderblock monolith directly abutting the freeway to our south. And, for the first time I saw this strange new anchor store named Belk, with its B adorned in just the same way as the L in Legget with which I was already familiar. This was Northgate, one of my very first road malls.

Northgate Mall during much of the nineties.

Northgate Mall opened as an open-air center in 1960 with Rose’s as the main anchor. It was expanded intermittently throughout the years until 1974 when, facing new competition in the form of South Square, the shopping plaza was enclosed and fully incorporated with anchors Sears and Thalhimer’s. In the nineties, the old Rose’s building was taken over by Hecht’s while Thalhimer’s became Hudson-Belk. In the 2000s, with a substantial new adversary coming in the form of The Streets at Southpointe, the eastern portion of Northgate was de-malled (how often does a center get enclosed just to be made open-air again?) Today, the old Belk is now a cineplex while the Hecht’s has become Macy’s, but, like the Sears that’s still hanging on, Northgate seems to be holding its own.

-UPDATE- Northgate Mall Mallmanac ca. 2008.  View the full PDF version here.

Opening Date-	1960
Gross Leasable Area-	900,000 square feet
Tiers-	One
Anchors-	Macy’s, Sears
Spaces-	100

Northgate Mall from the air. (Source)

Owner-	Northgate Associates
Location-	1058 West Club Boulevard