History
The Mall was formerly a Ford automobile assembly plant that was founded in the 1950s. Ford Mustangs were produced at this plant and Mustangs bearing the name San Jose as the assembly location were in fact built in Milpitas. The plant closed down in the early 1980s in part due to increasing competition with Japanese auto manufacturers aptly narrated in David Halberstam's book The Reckoning. In the early 1990s, developers resized the former plant and converted it into a mall. Today, an oak tree with a plaque commemorating Great Mall's history stands in the southwest section of its parking lot.
The Great Mall of the Bay Area, which opened on September 22, 1994, was developed as a joint venture between Ford Motor Land Development Corporation of Dearborn, Michigan and Petrie Dierman Kughn of McLean, Virginia.
Read more about this topic: Great Mall Of The Bay Area
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“Well, for us, in history where goodness is a rare pearl, he who was good almost takes precedence over he who was great.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)