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NorthPark Center

 
Wikipedia: NorthPark Center
NorthPark Center
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Location Dallas, Texas,  United States
Opening date 1965
Developer NorthPark Development Company
Management NorthPark Management Company
Owner NorthPark Development Company
No. of stores and services 225
No. of anchor tenants 6
Total retail floor area 2,000,000 sq ft (185,800 m2)[1]
No. of floors 3

NorthPark Center is an upscale shopping mall located in Dallas, Texas (United States). The mall is located at the intersection of Loop 12 (Northwest Highway) and US 75 (North Central Expressway). The center has over 235 stores and restaurants.[2]

Contents

History

In the early 1960s, developer Raymond Nasher leased a 97-acre (390,000 m2) cotton field on the edge of Dallas. NorthPark Center opened in 1965, as then the largest climate-controlled retail establishment in the world, and is now owned, managed, operated and leased by husband and wife David J. Haemisegger and Nancy A. Nasher (Ray's daughter).

The American Film Institute's Dallas International Film Festival was sponsored by NorthPark Center in 2009. The event was held in the AMC NorthPark 15 movie theater center, which also hosted screenings during the festival’s first two years.[3]

Art in the mall

Dillard's at NorthPark Center

From its inception, NorthPark Center has made art an integral part of its interior landscape. NorthPark received the American Institute of Architects Award for "Design of the Decade - 1960s" as one of the first commercial centers in the United States to create space for the display of fine art.[citation needed] NorthPark was honored again in 1992 with the A.I.A.'s 25-Year Award for Design Excellence. NorthPark's tradition of showcasing major works by world-renowned artists from Andy Warhol and Frank Stella to Jonathan Borofsky and Jim Dine continues with three recent acquisitions by NorthPark's owners, David J. Haemisegger and Nancy A. Nasher: the monumental Ad Astra, 2005, a 48-foot (15 m)-tall, 12-ton, orange steel giant sculpture by New York artist Mark di Suvero; the enormous, 21-foot (6.4 m)-tall, large-scale, stainless steel and aluminum sculpture Corridor Pin, Blue (1999), by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen; and 20 elements (2005), Joel Shapiro's vividly painted sculpture of 20 wooden blocks of varying sizes joined together.

Architecture

Nordstrom at NorthPark Center

Over the years, NorthPark Center has maintained its original design. For the most recent expansion, NorthPark's owners returned to Omniplan (Omniplan), the architectural firm that originally designed the center with white brick and highly polished concrete floors. The expansion turned NorthPark's original U-shape into a square design surrounding a 1.4-acre (5,700 m2) landscaped garden known as "CenterPark". Featuring a series of lawns, 41-year-old live oaks and red oaks, and a small collection of art, CenterPark doubles as a park area for visitors and customers to enjoy. This is the only shopping center in the country built around a landscaped garden[4]. NorthPark Center received both the Texas Society of Achitects annual Design Award and the 25-year Design Award in 2007 for the original design by Harrell & Hamilton (now Omniplan).[5] Even at the age of 40 years, NorthPark Center has not suffered the dead mall fate of others of similar age. After a major expansion, at 2,350,000 square feet (218,000 m2), it is now the second-largest mall in Texas and the 19th-largest in the U.S. based on total square feet of retail space (gross leasable area) according to the International Council of Shopping Centers.[6][7][8]

Anchors and stores

Barneys New York at NorthPark Center

With over 25 million visitors annually[9], NorthPark Center has consistently been named the top attraction in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex by the Dallas Business Journal, keeping NorthPark's anchors at the top in sales volume.[10]

Anchors

Public Library

Located in NorthPark Center is Bookmarks a Dallas Public Library, a 1,993-square-foot (185.2 m2) library for children 12 years and younger is a one-of-kind design collaboration between award-winning Dallas architects dsgn associates and Omniplan. Bookmarks is the first children's library in the United States located in a shopping center. [12].

Television and film location

NorthPark's interior has been frequently used for television and film.

Dr. T and the Women, the Robert Altman film, has one scene in which the character Kate (Farrah Fawcett) visits stores in the area of the Neiman Marcus court, then is seen around the Dillard's court fountain--which she eventually finds herself in, frolicking and splashing in the buff.[13]

True Stories, a 1986 movie co-starring David Byrne, with one scene of a fashion show held at a mall in Virgil, Texas (the movie's fictional setting) during a town celebration; the interior portion of the scene was filmed in a mid-court area between Neiman Marcus and Dillard's. When the mall was reopened in 2006, The Dallas Observer used the mall's ambiance as documented in the film as a source of comparison. "The place looks like a tricked-out spaceship compared to the stark, cold NorthPark in which True Stories was filmed exactly 20 years ago. It looks like the old NorthPark--damned if you can tell difference between the old bricks and the new ones; this thing looks like it was built in a time machine--yet it's brighter too, a friendlier version of the same ol' place."[14] Amusingly, the exterior of Virgil's mall wasn't of NorthPark -- the producers used the outside of the former Big Town Mall in nearby Mesquite.[15]

In the mid-to-late 1960s, the mall played host to Sump 'n Else, a live afternoon teen dance program hosted by Ron Chapman that aired on local station WFAA-TV (Channel 8, ABC). Musical guests included Frank Zappa and Jefferson Airplane.[citation needed]

See also

References

External links

Coordinates: 32°52′7″N 96°46′24″W / 32.86861°N 96.77333°W / 32.86861; -96.77333


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