Volusia Mall - History

History

Volusia Mall opened in 1974 at a 93-acre (380,000 m2) site on U.S. Highway 92, adjacent to I-95 and U.S. 1. It was originally built with 4 anchors; Ivey's, May-Cohens, Sears and JCPenney. Ivey's opened with the mall, in October 1974. May-Cohens came inline in December. Sears was the next to open, in February 1975, followed by JCPenney, in August 1975. All of the anchors except JCPenney were built as two-level stores.

The first expansion of Volusia Mall was completed in March 1982, when two-level Burdines and Belk-Lindsey stores were added to the existing structure.

Maison Blanche acquired the May-Cohen's / May Florida chain in June 1988. The store was branded as a Gayfers in early 1992, when the Maison Blanche chain was acquired by Fairfield, Ohio-based Mercantile Stores. Ivey's was the first anchor to be converted to Dillard's, doing so in June 1990. Belk Lindsey's location at the mall became a second Dillard's in November 1996. The mall gained its third Dillard's in 1998 when the Gayfers chain (along with Mercantile Stores) was acquired by the Little Rock retailer. Burdines was dual-branded as Burdines-Macy's in 2003, dropping the Burdines name in 2005.

Original tenants in Volusia Mall included a Walgreens pharmacy and a tri-screen movie theater. After Walgreens relocated outside the mall, its space was converted to another mall entrance, while the theater became a storefront church. Center court housed a large fountain and wishing well a couple hundred feet in size. The structure featured multiple geysers as well as a jogging path and was also used to stage special events. This feature was downsized in 1997.

Volusia Mall is the largest mall in the Daytona Beach area.

Read more about this topic:  Volusia Mall

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.
    Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)

    To a surprising extent the war-lords in shining armour, the apostles of the martial virtues, tend not to die fighting when the time comes. History is full of ignominious getaways by the great and famous.
    George Orwell (1903–1950)

    I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.
    Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)