History
The mall opened in 1981 as a project of national mall developer Jacobs, Visconti & Jacobs of Cleveland, Ohio. Citadel Mall is located at the intersection of Sam Rittenberg Boulevard (S.C. Highway 7) and Savannah Highway (U.S. Highway 17) at the junction of Interstate 526 in the heavily commercialized West Ashley suburb of Charleston, South Carolina.
At the time of its opening, Citadel Mall was anchored by Sears which relocated from a free-standing location in Downtown Charleston at Calhoun and St. Philip Streets, Belk, which shuttered a 1950s store in Pinehaven Shopping Center in North Charleston and relocated to the mall, and Thalhimer's, an upscale Richmond, Virginia based department store chain new to South Carolina owned by Carter Hawley Hale Stores.
Jacobs, Visconti & Jacobs later became The Richard E. Jacobs Group in the 1990s. The first major change at the mall occurred in 1992 when it was announced that Thalhimer's, now owned by the May Department Store Company would be folded into the Hecht's Department Store chain and the Charleston location would be sold to Dillard's. Dillard's moved from the former Thalhimer's to a new building in 1994. Thalhimer's sold the building to JCPenney, which operated there until 2001 when it was torn down for Target.
Belk relocated next to Dillard's, selling its old store to Parisian in 2006. When Belk bought Parisian in 2006, the Parisian store was closed. This store was sold to JCPenney, who returned to the mall in 2007.
The Richard E. Jacobs Group added a Food Court and completely remodeled the mall's interior in the early 2000s. Shortly thereafter, Jacobs divested the majority of its mall portfolio and sold Citadel Mall to CBL & Associates Properties. CBL added a sixth anchor store to the mix in 2005 - Dick's Sporting Goods on an outparcel next to the mall's freestanding six screen AMC Theaters.
On April 8, 2008, AMC Theaters announced that it was closing its Citadel Mall Cinema 6 after the final showing on Sunday, April 13, 2008. AMC also announced plans to close its Northwoods Mall Cinema 8 on the same date.
The cinema was originally built as a part of the General Cinemas chain which later was sold to AMC Theaters. General Cinemas had announced plans to demolish and replace the Citadel Mall Cinema 6 with a huge new multiplex featuring stadium seating and Dolby surround sound to be built on a vacant parcel of land behind the existing cinemas. With the sale to AMC these plans never materialized. On April 12, 2008 it was announced that the property was acquired by Southeast Cinema Entertainment of Charlotte, North Carolina. It was reopened temporarily until September 2008 when the current cinema building was demolished. It was replaced by a state of the art sixteen screen megaplex known as Citadel Mall IMAX Stadium 16 with several screens dedicated to art films and featuring stadium-style seating. The new IMAX megaplex opened October 2, 2009.
News reports have stated that Citadel Mall earns just 84 cents for each dollar of debt payments made by the mall, and the mall has lost stores such as Cache, GAP, and Hollister. However, the mall's owner has been reported as aggressively marketing the mall and attracting new tenants.
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