Detroit, Michigan has a number of suburbs, and therefore a requirement for numerous malls. Universal Mall is in the suburb Warren. It was a fairly old enclosed mall, having been built in 1965. Universal Mall as it was in 1965 is no longer at the Warren location. The mall was closed in June 2008 as it lost shoppers and retail stores. However, there will be a new Universal Mall shopping center on the same site. Construction began in July 2009 to bring an outdoor shopping center into the mix.
At the time the old mall was built the anchor stores were Montgomery Ward and Federal. Federal became Crowley's. The mall was expanded in the 80's to offer a food court, movie theater, and Mervyn's. Montgomery Ward closed in 2000. Mervyn's left in 2006 along with Value City in 2008. Burlington Coat Factory moved into one of the empty anchor store locations as did AJ Wright. At the time the mall closed there were 5 anchor tenant spaces with over 765,000 square feet of retail space on one floor. By the 1990's Universal Mall was considered a dead mall having lost most of their tenants.
The demolition is making way for a $20 million complex that will have Target as one of the anchors. In fact Target opened in July 2009. It is thought about 35 businesses will be a part of the mall. The only stores to survive the dead mall and demolition were AJ Wright, Burlington Coat Factory, and the movie theater. Del Taco and Petco are also slated to be at the new mall complex.
The new mall hours will be Monday through Saturday 10am to 9pm, and Sunday 12am to 5pm. Since the new mall is to be an outdoor style complex there will only be sales events held during the year. A lot of these outdoor complexes are being built throughout the United States. They tend to have blocks of stores set up in a huge area of land.
For example an anchor tenant like Target could stand alone or be a part of a larger block of stores; however, Target would be the center of that block. Typically the anchor is either in the middle or on one end, with things like Brookstone and other smaller retail stores surrounding it.
Some of the stores that might be included in the mall will include All the Kings Men, Auto Photo Systems, Bamboo Gardens, Brain Games, Bo Rics, Chase Bank, Clothes Den, Chic Hair Fashions, City Hatter Men's Store, and others. Blockbuster Video is also slated to be within the complex.
The restaurants surrounding the new mall have yet to be released. However, one can assume there will be a mixture of fast food and sit down restaurants. These complexes generally bring in places like TGI Friday's or Chili's, as well as McDonald's and other popular chains. A few of the stores will be Michigan specific, but one can also expect to find some of the top brand companies at this new mall location in the coming months.
