NorthPark Center

History

In the early 1960s, developer Raymond Nasher leased a 97-acre (390,000 m²) cotton field on the edge of Dallas and hired E.G Hamilton of Harrell+Hamilton Architects. NorthPark Center opened in 1965, as then the largest climate-controlled retail establishment in the world, and is now owned, managed, operated and leased by husband and wife David J. Haemisegger and Nancy A. Nasher (Ray's daughter). For its first 34 years, NorthPark stood on land leased from the Caruth family’s foundation. David and Nancy Nasher purchased the property in 1999. In 2006, NorthPark opened its doors to an expansion that more than doubled the size of the existing center, adding an 88,000 sq ft Barneys New York store as a new anchor. (Barneys turned out to be one of the Center's few failures in recent history; it closed its doors in 2012.) For its expansion, NorthPark brought back the same architecture firm that designed the original section to ensure its aesthetic was respected and enhanced. The expansion also included a new collection of specialty retail shops and a third-floor 16-screen AMC theater. The new two-story expansion finally provided for circulation around the Center, by forming a continuous loop through the entire complex.

The American Film Institute's Dallas International Film Festival was sponsored by NorthPark Center in 2009. The event was held in the AMC NorthPark 15 Theater, which also hosted screenings during the festival’s first two years.

Best known as an art museum inside a shopping center, in November 2007, NorthPark Center was named as one of the "seven retail wonders of the modern world" along with Neiman Marcus’ store at Natick Collection in Massachusetts, Japan’s Mikimoto store in Ginza, England’s Bullring shopping center, Poland’s Złote Tarasy in Warsaw, Apple’s flagship store in New York City and Italy’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II .

The 2008 expansion of NorthPark attracted a wide range of famous labels to open boutiques exclusive to the Texas market, including: Roberto Cavalli, Tod's, Officine Panerai, Eileen Fisher, Elie Tahari, Helen Ficalora, The North Face, Spanx, and Na Hoku.

NorthPark Center also is home to several Dallas exclusive stores including Agent Provocateur, Eileen Fisher, Elie Tahari, Frye Company, Helen Ficalora, Longchamp (opening Spring 2016), Mulberry, Officine Panerai, PIRCH, and Ted Baker.

NorthPark is the home of Texas' first H&M, a fashion label from Sweden. H&M has since opened other locations in Texas.

2006 also marked the year that the tenth annual Fashion!Dallas/Kim Dawson Model Search competition relocated from Galleria Dallas and began to take place at NorthPark Center. This competition helps launched the careers of supermodel Erin Wasson, Mimi Roche, Chaise Mooty, Ali Michael and hundreds of other successful models.

Art in the mall

From its inception, NorthPark Center has made art an integral part of its interior landscape. NorthPark received the American Institute of Architects Award for "Design of the Decade - 1960s" as one of the first commercial centers in the United States to create space for the display of fine art. NorthPark was honored again in 1992 with the A.I.A.'s 25-Year Award for Design Excellence. NorthPark's tradition of showcasing major works by world-renowned artists from Andy Warhol and Frank Stella to Jonathan Borofsky and Jim Dine continues with three recent acquisitions by NorthPark's owners, David J. Haemisegger and Nancy A. Nasher: the monumental Ad Astra, 2005, a 48-foot (15 m)-tall, 12-ton, orange steel giant sculpture by New York artist Mark di Suvero; the enormous, 21-foot (6.4 m)-tall, large-scale, stainless steel and aluminum sculpture Corridor Pin, Blue (1999), by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen; and 20 elements (2005), Joel Shapiro's vividly painted sculpture of 20 wooden blocks of varying sizes joined together.

Architecture

Designed by Omniplan in the early 1960s, NorthPark Center has maintained an honesty to its original design. For the most recent expansion, NorthPark's owners returned to the architectural firm responsible for the 1960s design. The expansion turned NorthPark's original U-shape into a square design surrounding a 1.4-acre (5,700 m²) landscaped garden known as "CenterPark." Featuring a series of lawns, 41-year-old live oaks and red oaks, seasonal flowers, crushed granite walkways, and a small collection of art, CenterPark doubles as a park area for visitors and customers to enjoy. Furthermore, it allegedly provides NorthPark with the distinction of being the only shopping center in the country built around a landscaped garden.

NorthPark Center received both the Texas Society of Architects' annual Design Award and the 25-year Design Award in 2007 for the original design. Even as it hits the half-century point in age, NorthPark Center has not suffered the dead mall fate of others of similar age. After a major expansion, at 2,350,000 square feet (218,000 m²), it is now the second-largest mall in Texas and the 21st-largest in the U.S. based on total square feet of retail space (gross leasable area) according to the International Council of Shopping Centers.

Eero Saarinen was hired to design the original Neiman Marcus store; however upon Saarinen's death in 1961, Kevin Roche completed the design assignment.

Reception

The mall received generally positive reviews and received an 4.5 star rating out of five, based on yelp.com, many visitors gave compliments to its high-end stores and restaurants.

Anchors

Original anchors

The original anchors were Titche-Goettinger, Neiman Marcus and JCPenney; later, Lord & Taylor was added. Titche's was renamed Joske's in 1979, and in 1987 the Joske's chain was absorbed by, and renamed, Dillard's. JCPenney closed in the 1990s and was later demolished. Foley's built a new store on the site in 1997. In 2006 Foley's became Macy's. In 2007 Barneys New York opened its first full-size Texas store as part of the Center's expansion, but the store fared poorly in Dallas' competitive retail market and closed in 2012.

Neiman Marcus is the only remaining original anchor of the mall operating under the same name.

High-Fashion

Traditionally, the west and south halls of NorthPark are home to NorthPark's most exclusive retailers including:

Junior anchors

Store rankings

Neiman Marcus NorthPark consistently competes with Neiman Marcus Beverly Hills for the number 1 ranking in sales volume while Dillard's NorthPark has traditionally been the chain's number one store.

Public library

Located in NorthPark Center is Bookmarks, a 1,993-square-foot (185.2 m²) a Dallas Public Library for children 12 years and younger. Bookmarks is the first children's library in the United States to be located in a shopping center.

Location

The Center is located at the intersection of two of Dallas’ busiest highways: Central Expressway and Loop 12/Northwest Highway, located to the east and south of the center respectively. NorthPark is also located across the freeway from The Shops at Park Lane, a massive mixed-use development with shopping that complements the Center's own options. NorthPark Center is the most popular shopping center in North Texas, with over 27 million visitors a year; its PR department has stated that NorthPark is one of the top five shopping destinations in the country.

Television and film location

NorthPark's interior has been frequently used for television and film.

Dr. T and the Women, the Robert Altman film, has one scene in which the character Kate (Farrah Fawcett) visits stores in the area of the Neiman Marcus court, then is seen around the Dillard's court fountain—which she eventually finds herself in, frolicking and splashing in the buff.

True Stories, a 1986 movie co-starring David Byrne, with one scene of a fashion show held at a mall in Virgil, Texas (the movie's fictional setting) during a town celebration; the interior portion of the scene was filmed in a mid-court area between Neiman Marcus and Dillard's. When the mall was reopened in 2006, The Dallas Observer used the mall's ambiance as documented in the film as a source of comparison. "The place looks like a tricked-out spaceship compared to the stark, cold NorthPark in which True Stories was filmed exactly 20 years ago. It looks like the old NorthPark--damned if you can tell difference between the old bricks and the new ones; this thing looks like it was built in a time machine--yet it's brighter too, a friendlier version of the same ol' place." Amusingly, the exterior of Virgil's mall wasn't of NorthPark—the producers used the outside of the former Big Town Mall in nearby Mesquite.

When the shopping center first opened television station WFAA-TV Channel 8 built a studio the broadcast local television shows Sump'n Else and Away We Go. Sump'n Else was a local music bandstand program starring KLIF-AM DJ Ron Chapman and local teen idol television and radio broadcaster Ralph Baker Jr who also hosted a show on KLIF-AM while doing Sump'n Else. The station had formed a television dance group called The Little Group. Before the station had a television bandstand show called The Group And Chapman which was broadcast from WFAA Communications Center Studios in Downtown Dallas. The reason the station opened a studio in Northpark was so that people who were not in the audience could also see a live broadcast through the studios glass windows. Away We Go was a local game show hosted by Ron Chapman.