Most enclosed malls that opened in the early 1970s have spent the last two decades losing anchors, filling vacancies with trampolines and urgent-care clinics, or simply being torn down. Fashion Place in Murray, UT, has spent the same period demolishing its own buildings on purpose and replacing them with better ones.
It sits on State Street in the middle of the Salt Lake Valley, a regional shopping center that opened in 1972 with four department stores, a cinema, and a supermarket.
The Sears building came down. So did the original Nordstrom box, the original Dillard’s box, and two other anchor structures. The footprint of what replaced them is larger than what was there before…