Columbia Mall (Grand Forks)

Columbia Mall
Location Grand Forks, North Dakota
Opening date August 2, 1978
Developer Dayton Hudson Corporation
Owner GK Development, Inc.
No. of stores and services 70+
No. of anchor tenants 4
Total retail floor area 710,000 square feet
No. of floors 1
Website shopcolumbiamall.com

Columbia Mall is an enclosed regional shopping mall in Grand Forks, North Dakota and is located at the intersection of 32nd Avenue South and Columbia Road.

It is the largest mall within 70 miles (110 km). Located 80 miles [128.7 km] from the Canadian border and 140 miles [225 km] from Winnipeg, the mall draws a significant number of customers from Canada.

Columbia Mall, which opened in 1978, was developed by the Dayton Hudson Corporation (now Target Corporation) at a cost of roughly $20 million.

Today, Columbia Mall houses four department stores (Macy's, JCPenney, Sears, and Scheels), a 430-seat food court, and more than 70 specialty merchants. GK Development, Inc. of Barrington, Illinois, is the current owner of the mall. In 2005, GK Development added the new Dakota Cafe food court, a children's play area, and renovated the rest rooms.

History

Columbia Mall
Location of Columbia Mall

Dayton Hudson experienced fierce competition for a new mall in the city of Grand Forks in 1975.[1] While their proposal was to build a mall at the intersection of 32nd Avenue South and Columbia Road, Inland Construction of Edina, Minnesota wanted to build a mall at 32nd Avenue South and Washington Street (one mile east of the Dayton Hudson site), which was quickly dismissed, while a group of local investors and Farber-Kelley Ltd. of Toronto advanced a proposal for a mall at Demers Avenue and 42nd Street to be called "Marketplace West". While Marketplace West was initially preferred by the city planning department, a referendum was called to annex Dayton Hudson's proposed Columbia Mall site to the city. When it passed, the city council interpreted it as a public endorsement of the Columbia Mall project. Interestingly, the Marketplace West site would later become the home of the Alerus Center arena and convention center.

Columbia Mall opened on August 2, 1978 with 571,800 sq ft (53,120 m2) of space. Major merchants at the new mall included both Dayton Hudson-owned Target and Dayton's stores as well as a JCPenney store. The mall's early marketing efforts included a jingle, "Meet me at Columbia Mall," that was also produced as a television commercial and recast in a holiday version.[2]

In 2000, Sears department store opened at Columbia Mall, bringing the number of department stores in the mall to four. In 2001 Dayton Hudson Corporation acquired the Marshall Field & Co. chain and renamed some of its Dayton's stores as Marshall Field's, including the store at Columbia Mall. In 2005, Federated Department Stores, Inc. acquired the May Co., which had acquired and owned the Marshall Field's chain for less than a year. In early fall 2007, the American Red Cross established a disaster relief operations headquarters at the shopping center in response to the August 26 tornado that struck nearby Northwood, ND. Federated re-branded the Field's chain as Macy's including the Columbia Mall store. In 2014, Scheels All Sports opened in the anchor position that previously housed a Target store.[3]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ "Picking mall site sparked lots of fussin' n' fightin'", Herschel Kenner, Grand Forks Herald, 1 August 1978, p. B1
  2. ↑ RetroWinnipeg (2006-12-08), Grand Forks - Columbia Mall commercial (1980), retrieved 2016-02-29
  3. ↑ "Store Details | Scheels". www.scheels.com. Retrieved 2016-02-29.

External links

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