Livonia Mall, Livonia, MI

Livonia Mall was first opened in 1964. Its location was in a Detroit, Michigan suburb also called Livonia. The mall is no longer open, having closed in 2008 due to rough economic times and age. The mall unlike Laurel Park Mall a few miles away did not have enough to attract shoppers in the later years. Laurel Park Mall opened in the 80's taking with it numerous shoppers from the Livonia Mall location. However, Livonia will not lack a Livonia Mall for much longer. In 2008 plans for redevelopment were discussed with the Livonia City Council. They came to a conclusion that the mall would be demolished and redevelopment would begin. The demolition began on January 2009 and was completed in August 2009.

The new mall will be called Livonia Marketplace. It is to be a power center meaning that it will be an open air mall with at least 250,000 square feet of leasable retail space. The details on this particular center were released in August. The mall will contain 350,000 square feet of space. It will be more about walking around outdoors for exercise and enjoyment during the shopping experience. Rather than a food court, restaurants will be interspersed throughout the space. These open air malls all have anchor stores, and Livonia Marketplace will be anchored by Wal-Mart.

As for Lavonia Mall it was owned by Konover Properties. It had over fifty stores with two tenants when it was first built. Sears and Crowley's were the anchors. In the 80's Mervyn's and Child World moved in. The 1990's and 2000's were extremely rough on the mall which is when the mall lost most of its tenants. In 2006 Mervyn's closed. Eventually the Mervyn's space which was filled with Value City also emptied. By 2008, during the mall closure, Sears and Jo-Ann Fabrics were the only tenants left in the area. Sears vacated the areas before demolition began, but Jo-Ann's did not close until demolition began.

Besides the anchor stores Children's Palace and a paintball arena were located at the mall. All of this of course began to close in the 90's. Foot Locker, Dollar Tree and other independent shops had presences at the mall until the redevelopment was discussed. It may be that many of the stores that left will move back in after the new development has been built.

For now Livonia is going to be named a dead mall, and Livonia will have to wait for the completed construction. Groundbreaking began in September. The Livonia Phoenix LLC in partnership with Grand Sakwa Properties and Lormax Stern Development will take on the new shopping center. Wal- Mart is building a super complex on 7 mile and Middlebelt Roads. Already the developers have some tenants who are interested in the new Livonia Mall though they are not releasing names. This new mall is smaller than the original, but the developers still anticipate it will bring back the shoppers. It will be a $60 million project with $25 million coming from Wal- Mart. The retail space is supposed to be completed in summer 2010.