Northwestern Highway and 8 Mile Road
Oakland County (Southfield), Michigan
The third mall-type center designed by master architect Victor Gruen was the first that was actually built. NORTHLAND CENTER was situated on a 163-acre tract, located 10 miles northwest of center city Detroit, in an unincorporated section of Oakland County known as Southfield Township. Ground was broken on May 7, 1952.
The complex was a sprawling, 1,040,200 square foot, open-air structure. It encompassed 2 levels. The ground floor was devoted entirely to retail. A basement included lower levels for the larger stores, two subterranean shopping concourses, storage areas, mall offices, a US Post Office, Community Room and truck tunnel network. During the mall's early years, the basement was also maintained as a fallout shelter.
A 4-level (486,200 square foot) J.L. Hudson, the first suburban location in the Detroit-based chain, was situated in the center of the cluster-type mall. This store was surrounded by five retail blocks and seven open court areas. All enclosed structures were air-conditioned and there were twelve escalators. Court areas featured fountains and over 8,000 trees, shrubs and flowering plants. Prerecorded music could be heard over a system of loudspeakers.
Thirteen sculptures had been designed by six artisans. These works included "Water Mobile" and "Fish Group" (by Richard Hall Jennings), "Turtle" (by Arthur Craft),"Baby Elephant" and "Giraffe Family" (by Malcom Moran), "Birds of Flight" (by Gwen Lux) and "Bear & Boy" (by Marshall Fredericks).
The 30 million dollar shopping venue officially opened for business on March 22, 1954, with sixty-seven stores and services. Within months, a total of eighty-one were in operation. At the time of the mall's completion, its 7,500 car parking area was the largest in the world. It was divided into ten lots designated as A through J.
In keeping with the 1950s concept of a regional retail center, the mall was a one-stop shopping destination. In its original configuration, NORTHLAND CENTER included ten dress shops, seven shoe stores, three millinery shops, three jewelry shops, four home furnishing & appliance stores, five men's & boy's shops and four restaurants, as well as a bank, 5 & 10, supermarket, garden supply store, medical clinic, record store, drug store, beauty parlor, lost children office and 300-seat Community Room. The mall even had its own fire department.
Charter tenants included Hughes & Hatcher men's wear, Winkelman's and Himelhoch's ladies' wear, Barna-bee Children's Shops, Robinson Furniture, Baker's Shoes, Chandler's Shoes, Sanders Candy, the Hot 'N' Kold Shop (home appliances & electronics), a Kroger supermarket and S.S. Kresge 5 & 10.
The area surrounding -and including- the shopping center was incorporated, as the City of Southfield, in April 1958. Vehicular access was improved in 1962, when the James Couzens (later John C. Lodge) Expressway was extended from Detroit's Wyoming Avenue to 8 Mile Road.
By this time, other shopping malls were being developed in the NORTHLAND trade area. These included LIVONIA MALL (1964-2009) {6.8 miles southwest, in Livonia}), WESTLAND CENTER (1965) {11.9 miles southwest, in Westland}and TEL-TWELVE MALL (1968-2001) {4.7 miles northwest, also in Southfield}.
As a result, NORTHLAND CENTER had been expanded. Hudson's added a 5th floor in 1960, with the store enlarged to 537,000 square feet. The Building G and Building H blocks, on the south end of the complex, were completed in the early '60s, adding stores such as Tall Eez Shoes and Best & Company. Stores in Building I, on the mall's north end, began opening in the fall of 1969. These included G.Q. Modern Shoppe, Barclay Gallery Limited and B. Dalton Bookseller.
The first -and only- motion picture venue to operate at the mall was built adjacent to its north parking area. The Suburban Detroit Theaters, Incorporated Northland Theatre debuted on November 17, 1966. The cinema was twinned in November 1976 and came under the American Multi-Cinema brand in June 1986. It was shuttered in January 1990 and re-opened as Millenium Center -a Bollywood and live-performance venue- in April 2000.
Meanwhile, a mall-wide NORTHLAND renovation was done between July 1973 and August 1975. A 2-level (284,000 square foot) J.C. Penney was built on the northeast corner. The store opened its doors, in unison with a brand new EASTLAND location, on May 21, 1975. The second phase of the 25 million dollar remodeling enclosed the mall. NORTHLAND CENTER re-opened, as a fully-enclosed shopping facility, on August 3, 1975. With its twenty-one store expansion, it now encompassed approximately 1.5 million leasable square feet and featured 102 stores and services.
A bus stop area at the front of the shopping hub was filled with a new block of inline stores in 1980-1981. By the mid-1980s, several major tenants had vacated, including S.S. Kresge, Jo-Ann Fabrics and The Limited. Illinois-based MainStreet joined the tenant list on March 12, 1988. This 1-level (61,000 square foot) store would be rebranded by Wisconsin-based Kohl's on March 19, 1989.
A new decade brought a 7 million dollar indoor-outdoor face lift. New lighting, ceilings, flooring and skylights were installed. An 8-bay Food Court was created in existing mall space. The culinary complex opened in November 1991.
Montgomery Ward gutted store space in two northwest blocks, creating a 2-level (118,400 square foot) store. This opened for business on November 19, 1994. A (40,300 square foot) T.J. Maxx had welcomed its first customers on November 10th. The next expansion extended NORTHLAND CENTER southeast. A 1-level (116,000 square foot) Target made its debut on March 10, 1996.
Montgomery Ward closed its "underperforming" store in early 1998. J.C. Penney was shuttered in June of the year 2000. Kohl's pulled out of the mall in 2004. The old Montgomery Ward was leased to National Wholesale Liquidators, who opened in October 2004 but closed in November 2008. Hudson's was rebranded as Marshall Field's in August 2001 and morphed into a Macy's in September 2006.
The shuttering of the NORTHLAND CENTER Target, on February 1, 2015, left the massive mall with just one anchor to sustain it. Cincinnati's Macy's Inc. announced that the mall's primary anchor would also be closing. This transpired on March 23, 2015, leaving the historic shopping hub anchor-less.
By this time, the owners of NORTHLAND CENTER had defaulted on a 31 million dollar loan, sending the property into receivership. 3 million dollars were also owed in back taxes and utility bills. An estimated 6 million dollars were needed to complete various repairs to the 1,680,000 square foot structure. In February 2015, an Oakland County judge approved plans to vacate and shutter the historic shopping hub. It closed on April 10, 2015.
Between the mid-1990s and early 21st century, ownership of NORTHLAND CENTER had changed four times. The fourth transaction, which closed in October 2015, transferred the deed of the shuttered shopping center to the City of Southfield. Demolition of the Target and Firestone buildings commenced in October 2017. IMAGINE NORTHLAND, a redevelopment plan for the remainder of the mall, was drawn up but eventually abandoned.
In July 2021, Contour Companies, of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, acquired the mall. Bruce Kopytek, Chief Architect, would oversee its redevelopment as NORTHLAND CITY CENTER. Under this plan, the original anchor store would be restored and reconfigured as the Hudson City Market.
This facility would include a food hall, entertainment venues, home furnishings mart and leased office spaces. The inline store sections of the original mall would be repurposed as 254 loft apartments. The J.C. Penney and Main Street-Kohl's structures, added to NORTHLAND CENTER in the 1970s and '80s, would be demolished.
Multi-story buildings, containing apartments, town homes and street-level retail, would be built, with patches of greenspace and parking facilities also created. Old and new structures would incorporate the Mid-Century Modern architecture used for the original 1954 mall. Ground was broken for Phase One on October 7, 2021. It is projected that Phases One and Two will be complete by 2027.
Sources:
The Detroit Free Press
The Milwaukee Journal
The Record-Eagle (Traverse City, Michigan)
The Ottawa Citizen (Ottawa, Ontario)
The Birmingham Eccentric (Birmingham, Michigan)
"Shopping Centers: Locating Controlled Regional Centers" Eugene J. Kelley -1956
preservenet.cornell.edu/publications/Longstreth Branch Store.doc
http://www.michiganhighways.org
http://cinematreasures.org
Northland Center Leasing Plan / GP Northland Center, LLC
"Images of Modern America - Northland Mall" / Gerald E. Naftaly
http://www.shopatnorthland.com
http://www.aacrealty.com / Ashkenazy Acquisition Corporation
http://www.crainsdetroit.com
http://www.imaginenorthland.com
www.michigansthumb.com
https://www.contourcompanies.com
https://apnews.com
https://www.cnu.org
FAIR USE OF NORTHLAND CENTER IMAGES:
The images from Architectural Digest / June 1954 illustrate a key moment in the mall's history that is described in the article. The images are not replaceable with free-use or public-domain images. The use of the images does not limit the copyright owners' rights to distribute the images in any way. The images are being used for non-profit, informational purposes only and their use is not believed to detract from the original images in any way.
