History
Tallahassee Mall opened in 1971 with three anchor stores: Woolco, Gayfers and Montgomery Ward; other major tenants included McCrory Stores and Walgreens. Woolco was closed in 1983 and subsequently replaced with Zayre. Seven years later, this anchor became Ames when the Zayre chain was acquired.
A new wing was added behind Montgomery Ward in 1992. This new wing ended in a fourth anchor store, Parisian. As a result of this wing opening, the Montgomery Ward store was bisected by a new mall concourse to connect the new wing to the existing mall. Despite the opening of Service Merchandise and the first Tallahassee-area Goody's Family Clothing store in the former Ames in 1995, mall occupancy had decreased to forty-five percent by June of that year.
A twenty-screen movie theater owned by AMC Theaters was added to the Parisian wing in 1996. Gayfers was acquired by Dillard's in 1998, followed by the closure of two more anchors: Service Merchandise in 1999 and Montgomery Ward in 2000. Jones Lang LaSalle acquired the mall and then began renovations on it. The former was split between Ross Dress for Less and Shoe Carnival, while the latter became Burlington Coat Factory and other stores. Several new big box stores were added, including Oshman's (now The Sports Authority), Barnes & Noble and Guitar Center.
Feldman Mall Properties acquired the mall from Jones Lang LaSalle in 2005. Belk acquired the Parisian chain in 2007 and re-branded the Tallahassee Mall store as Belk, while Dillard's announced its closure in early 2008.
The mall was foreclosed on in January 2011. Later in the same month, a real estate company based in Miami bought its ground lease for $100. The mall is not expected to close.
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