Location | Waterford Township, Michigan, United States |
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Opening date | May 10, 1962 |
Closing date | September 10, 2009 (mall corridors) December 7, 2014 (last remaining anchor) |
Developer | A & W Management |
No. of stores and services | approx. 200 at peak |
No. of anchor tenants | 6 |
Total retail floor area | 1,400,000 sq ft (130,000 m2) |
No. of floors | 1 (2 in former Sears, 3 in former Macy's) |
Summit Place Mall, originally Pontiac Mall, was Michigan's first enclosed shopping mall. The Mall was built on a 74-acre (30 ha) site located in Waterford Township, Michigan, United States. The 1,400,000-square-foot (130,000 m2) retail center, designed by Charles N. Agree, opened in 1962 with expansions between 1987 and 1993. At its peak, it had approximately 200 inline tenants and six anchor stores: Hudson's (later Marshall Field's, then Macy's), Sears, J. C. Penney, Montgomery Ward, Service Merchandise and Kohl's.
Following the opening of Great Lakes Crossing in nearby Auburn Hills in 1998, Summit Place Mall lost many of its tenants to this newer mall, also losing Service Merchandise and Montgomery Ward to their respective bankruptcies in 1999 and 2000. In the 2000s, Summit Place became a dead mall as the majority of its stores closed. Following the closure of Kohl's in March 2009, the mall concourses were closed off in September 2009. J.C. Penney and Macy's remained until early 2010, and Sears until 2014.
Summit Place Mall was Michigan's first enclosed shopping mall. It was built at the northwest corner of Telegraph Road (US 24) and Elizabeth Lake Road on the boundary between the city of Pontiac and Waterford Township. Two tenants opened ahead of the mall: a Kroger supermarket began operation in 1961, and a Montgomery Ward department store in February 1962. Opening on Thursday, May 10, 1962, the mall featured one other major department store: a "budget" branch of Detroit-based Hudson's, which unlike the existing Hudson's stores, did not feature furniture or small appliances. It was later upgraded to a full-line Hudson's store. Among the mall's 42 inline tenants on opening day were Cunningham Drug and a Kresge dime store. It occupied 500,000 square feet (46,000 m2) of store area overall. The mall was built by A&W Management (now known as Ramco-Gershenson Properties Trust) and its architect was A. Arnold Agree, son of Detroit architect Charles N. Agree. The mall concourses featured over 120 sculptures.Sears built a 181,900-square-foot (16,900 m2) store at the north end of the site in the 1972, although this store was not part of the mall at the time. In 1972, an elephant named Little Jenny, who starred in the movie Elephant Walk, was buried on the mall site.