Forty-four years after Valley View Mall replaced the Byrd-Pierce family’s cotton farm, the North Dallas shopping center met its demise.
On Friday, demolition of the property began to make way for the $4-billion development Dallas Midtown, the Dallas Observer reports. Beck Ventures, a Dallas-based real estate and investment management company, plans to construct a “city within a city” composed of 1 million square feet of retail and office space, 1,000 new apartments and a 20-acre park. A luxury movie theater and 183,000-square-foot health and wellness center also are part of Beck Ventures’ agenda.
Malls across the country have struggled to retain their popularity with the rise of online shopping, competitive retail centers and discount stores, according to the New York Times.
In Valley View Mall’s case, co-existing only a mile away from Galleria Dallas, which opened in 1982, proved to be fatal.
“What effectively happened over the subsequent 15 to 20 years thereafter is that you had two malls,” Scott Beck, chief executive of Beck Ventures, told the Times. “The new shiny object, which was the Galleria, sucked the best tenants out of the Valley View Mall.”
