
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 |
there is an interesting mall in Billings, MT that they build a street down the middle of it. I forget what it is called but I bet you can find it pretty easily. Interesting stuff...
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