On its grand opening date in 1966, Southland Mall created a three-hour traffic jam on U.S. 51 (now called Elvis Presley Boulevard) and its parking lot filled with about 4,000 cars by 10 a.m.

Newspaper ads leading up to the opening boasted that the mall’s 51 stores would employ 3,000 people. The enclosed shopping center became the destination point for customers of scores of businesses under the mall roof.

Now, on a Thursday afternoon, no more than two dozen cars speckle its parking lot on the southeast corner of Shelby Drive and Elvis Presley Boulevard. Several vacancies are scattered throughout the mall. 

Sears places Southland Mall store on the chopping block

The Whitehaven shopping center is not alone in its decline. Analysts have recently predicted the end of shopping malls, especially with the shuttering of big box department stores like Sears, Macy’s and JCPenney across the nation. A 2020 analysis by Coresight Research estimated that 25% of America’s roughly 1,000 malls would close over the following three to five years. 

Southland Mall’s largest vacancies, anchors that once held some of America’s dying department stores, could become a source of new life for the mall.

Where a Sears and Sears Auto Center once stood on the west end will become a Starbucks, AutoZone megastore and Public Storage. The former Macy’s site, that began as Goldsmith’s, is also currently being renovated, Southland Mall General Manager DeMall Davis said. 

Furniture store brings new life to shuttered Macy’s

Global Building, LLC has owned the future Public Storage building since Nov. 23, 2020, just more than a year after Sears closed its doors. According to the company, $49 million worth of building permits were pulled for new development in Whitehaven in 2019.

Michael O. Harris, director of the Greater Whitehaven Economic Redevelopment Corporation, said the Starbucks is a business sought by the community, though some are concerned that it may compete with locally owned Muggin’ Coffeehouse. 

However, those involved in the mall’s everyday operations are not completely sold on the promise of those new developments. 

“I’m not opposed to it because any kind of traffic is good traffic,” Davis said. “I wish it would be something different, but I have no control over the anchors.”

Davis said what the mall needs, especially as consumers reimagine the shopping center’s future, are ideas outside the norm. He suggested an arcade, bowling alley, skating rink, or any local business. Much of the mall’s traffic comes from Whitehaven High School across Elvis Presley when school is in session. 

Oak Court Mall owner files for reorganization bankruptcy

GWERC, Harris’ organization, has a business incubator program for home-based endeavors that want to become brick-and-mortar stores. After the first round of businesses complete the nine months of training and testing strategies, Harris said, the hope is to have two businesses ready to occupy vacancies in Southland Mall. 

Shavon Adams has done business in the mall since 2019, first operating a boutique and then her current business, Feelin’ My Selfie Studio. 

Like Davis, Adams welcomes the traffic a business like Starbucks would bring to the mall, but she wishes for bigger businesses inside the mall as well. The anchor locations have separate entrances and do not require visitors to walk through the enclosed space, passing smaller commercial spaces. 

“We need some businesses that will actually bring the flow of people in here,” she said. 

Adams said since 2019, she’s seen some growth in the mall but 2022 has been particularly rough. She said the mall lost three businesses within the last 90 days, and as she spoke, closing signs hung near the entrances of a couple more. 

The biggest struggle both Adams and Davis pointed out is the public perception of Southland Mall and the area surrounding it. 

Davis said some common descriptors from people asked about the mall are “ratchet,” “worn-down” and “dirty.”

“People think it’s a hood spot,” the mall executive said. “People don’t give us a chance.” 

Those perceptions, however, are attached to prior concerns about the establishment’s upkeep. Last year, neighbors demanded a cleanup of the site, which was surrounded by litter, abandoned cars, and overgrown weeds. 

Davis began working at the mall last year. Thursday afternoon, the parking lot was free of litter. 

“When I got started, I felt like we can’t give up on our communities because if we continue to give up on them, nothing is never going to come,” Adams said.