On the morning of February 22, 1996, something remarkable happened in Lake Wales, Florida. Before the doors of the brand-new Eagle Ridge Mall had been open for 30 minutes, 3,700 people had already pushed through the entrance.
By the time the lights dimmed that night, over 20,000 shoppers had walked the mall’s corridors – an opening day that felt less like a retail launch and more like a town coming alive.
The mall was built on Eagle Ridge Drive by developer General Growth Properties at a cost of around $100 million…