Scottsdale Mall: the city's own mall

ANNOUNCED JULY 3, 1966 · GROUNDBREAKING OCTOBER 28, 1971 · OPENED AUGUST 1, 1973 · CLOSED AND DEMOLISHED 2004 · SOUTHEAST CORNER OF MIAMI STREET AND IRELAND ROAD

Seven years from announcement to opening: Scottsdale Mall was the work of two Columbus, Ohio firms, the Don M. Casto Organization and the Joseph Skilken Corporation — the same developers who had opened Town & Country on McKinley Avenue in Mishawaka in 1961, rehearsing across the city line for the bigger job. The Tribune announced the "all-weather shopping center" on July 3, 1966, for the southeast corner of Miami and Ireland, beside the Scottsdale housing addition that gave it its name. The city's South Side plan preserves the pitch as the developers made it: a 521,000-square-foot, year-round, comfort-controlled center that would give a twenty-county trade area "its first and Indiana's finest regional shopping center," a $25 million project. The plans as announced in 1969 had grown to a two-story center of 860,000 square feet. Then the project spent five and a half years fighting the State Highway Department over the proposed U.S. 20 bypass, whose alignment ran against the mall's parking; in 1970 the developers asked the state to move the bypass slightly south, were refused, considered withdrawing, and built anyway on altered plans. Ground was broken on October 28, 1971, with the executives of Montgomery Ward and L. S. Ayres and Mayor Lloyd M. Allen on the ground; the city's timeline prices the project at $12 million at groundbreaking, the Tribune at more than $40 million by opening, and the three figures are carried here as the record gives them. The builders were Guepel DeMars of Indianapolis; the architect, Sidney H. Morris.

The opening form: The mall that opened on August 1, 1973 — Don M. Casto Jr. himself at the ribbon — was a two-story enclosed center of three anchors: Montgomery Ward, which until then had kept only a catalog store in South Bend; L. S. Ayres; and Ayr-Way, the Ayres discount chain, which held its grand opening over the week of August 27. The city's timeline counts 52 stores open on the day and a total of 102 within twelve months, and 2,000 jobs; the Tribune's pre-opening account said 105 stores, and the Directory of Major Malls later listed the finished center at 670,000 square feet. Inside were the furnishings of the form at its height: fountains with seating, spiral staircases and escalators, and a community room seating 300. Sixteen days after the opening, ABC Great States Theatres — later Plitt — opened a two-screen cinema in the mall; its screen record stands in the Theaters section. Scottsdale was the trade area's first regional enclosed mall, as its developers had pitched it, and for two years the county's only enclosed mall of any size — and it was the south side's front parlor.

The long erosion: The erosion began with geography. In 1976 the state condemned part of the mall's south parking for the bypass; the mall sued over the missing environmental study, and the state built the road with its own money instead — the city's timeline keeps the whole fight. In 1979 University Park Mall opened six miles away in Mishawaka, on a highway amid other retail, against Scottsdale's residential surroundings; tenants such as The Limited and Spencer Gifts closed at Scottsdale in favor of the new mall, and the first ten- and fifteen-year leases began expiring into vacancies in the early 1980s. Ayr-Way became a Target in 1981, one of three Ayr-Way conversions in South Bend that year. Casto spent $500,000 brightening the mall in 1982 and bought land for a fourth anchor that was never built. The developers sold in 1984 to the Trivest Group of Barrington, Illinois, which sold a year later to George Comfort. In 1988, the city's timeline records, the mall raised its lease rates sharply as the fifteen-year leases expired and sixteen stores left. By 1989 the vacancy rate stood at about 25 percent.

Foreclosure, a lawsuit against an anchor, and a revival: MassMutual took over management and the $22 million mortgage in 1990 by the city's timeline, and assumed the deed in 1991 in lieu of foreclosure. When the May Department Stores Company closed the L. S. Ayres store in January 1992 for declining sales, the mall's owners sued — a dark anchor, they argued, could kill the center, and Ayres had closed before its lease expired; Ayres was required to reopen or sell, and it reopened in July 1992. By early 1993 the mall was, on the Tribune record, 54 percent occupied; the city's timeline says 43 percent leased, and both figures stand. Ownership passed to Dial Properties of Omaha and then to Richard I. Rubin of Philadelphia, whose renovation — the city's timeline prices it at $12 million — added skylights, a food court, and a comedy club and carried the theater to six screens; in 1994 the mall held a grand re-opening as the first smoke-free mall, 85 percent leased on the city's count, and under General Growth management the Tribune could headline a "quiet revival" in 1998 with occupancy over 80 percent. The revival was real and it was not enough. Ayres closed for the final time on January 29, 2000; smaller stores followed it out; MassMutual put the mall up for sale that July; and Montgomery Ward closed in March 2001, leaving two of the three anchors dark.

Demolition: In September 2002 a partnership of Kite Realty of Indianapolis and Kimco Realty of Jericho, New York, bought the property — Kimco having already bought the Ward building, which Ward owned outright — and the sale was completed in July 2003 with Schottenstein Realty joined as a third partner. The plan was a power center: demolish the Ward box for a relocated Target, keep the rest trading until 2004, then take the mall down. By the end of 2003 about forty tenants remained, the theater and the comedy club among them. Demolition ran through 2004; at the end, a small portion of the interior stayed open for the last six stores — a Mexican restaurant, a hair salon, a nail salon, a GNC, a GameStop, and a RadioShack. The ground's next life is the Erskine Village entry below.

Sources:

1. The South Bend Tribune, July 3, 1966 ("All-weather shopping center slated: Scottsdale Mall site is Miami at Ireland") — the announcement; November 20, 1969 (the announced plans at 860,000 square feet); and the Tribune record carried through the mall's course: July 15, 1971; October 28, 1971 (groundbreaking); July 29, 1973 (the "new city," 105 stores, over $40 million); August 1, 1973 (opening); August 12 and 26, 1973 (the theater, the Ayr-Way fete); October 16, 1981 (the Target conversion); October 24, 1982 (the $500,000 renovation); January 23, 1991 and March 6, 1991, Tribune Business Weekly (the MassMutual plans); October 29, 1999 (Ayres's final closing, January 29); July 6 and December 29, 2000 (the sale, the Ward closing); March 18 and December 16, 2001; March 10 and September 18, 2002; July 2 and October 12, 2003; September 8, 2004 (the demolition timetable) — via the citations assembled in the retail-history record.
2. South Bend Redevelopment Commission, Resolution No. 1955, South Side Economic Development Project District Plan (2003), and Resolution No. 1914, South Side Development Area designation — the district history and timeline: the 1966 concept and its 521,000 square feet and twenty-county pitch; the five-and-a-half-year bypass fight and the 1970 refusal; the $12 million groundbreaking figure; 52 stores at opening and 102 within twelve months; 2,000 jobs; the 1976 condemnation and suit; the 1988 lease-rate exodus; the 1990 MassMutual takeover; the 1992 Ayres closing and reopening; 43 percent leased in 1993 and the $12 million renovation; the 1994 smoke-free grand re-opening at 85 percent leased; Ayres's final closing January 29, 2000; Ward's closing March 2001.
3. Directory of Major Malls (MJJTM Publications, 1990) — Scottsdale Mall listed at 670,000 square feet.
4. Heidi Prescott, "A quiet revival: Scottsdale Mall survives exodus, makes strides drawing shoppers," The South Bend Tribune, March 1, 1998 — occupancy over 80 percent under General Growth management; the 54-percent-occupied figure for early 1993.