Looking for any information regarding all four malls in Greenville (Wade Hampton: 2013, home)

[saberclaw]

The four malls in question are Haywood, Greenville, McAlister Square, and Bell Tower. Stories, maps, photos, are fine.

What I know...

• McAlister Square died sometime around or shortly after 1999 after the closure of Upton's and Belk-Simpson. Dillard's had already left for Haywood in 1995.

• The original anchor line-up at McAlister Square was just Ivey's and Meyers-Arnold. Belk-Simpson wouldn't be added until 1974.

• Sometime in the early 2000s, Greenville Tech renovated the former Upton's. University Center started around the same time in the old Dillard's building.

• Belk sat vacant from closure until its demolition in 2019. (Though I do vaguely recall that it was reused at least once by the Children's Museum around 2008/2009)

• Greenville Mall opened in 1978 with Wards and JB White, as well as a cinema and a Morrison's Cafeteria. The latter two were gone by 1995, and were reworked into mall space.

• The original Montgomery Ward closed around 1995 and was reworked into mall space and Oshman's.

• Parisian was added in 1995 when the entire mall was renovated, but would only last four years prior to being converted into Proffitt's. Proffitt's closed in 2005.

• JB White became Dillard's in 1998, and would close in 2003. Wards closed in 2001 with the entire chain.

• Oshman's became Sports Authority around 2005-ish, and would close in 2013 prior to the demolition of the remains of the mall.

• Greenville Mall was largely demolished in 2008.

• Bell Tower opened on the original Furman campus in the 60s with Edwards, Woolco, and Winn-Dixie as anchors. All three were gone by the 80's.

• Bell Tower closed and became County Square by 1986.

• Haywood Mall opened in 1980 with Sears, JCPenney, Rich's, and Belk-Simpson.

• Haywood originally featured a large fountain/water display in between Belk and Rich's.

• Dillard's joined in 1995 with an entire new wing for their store. The mall gained the lone parking garage it has during this time.

• The water feature was removed in 2005.

• Rich's converted to Macy's in 2005.

I'm trying to fill in gaps in the history of these places, and would love any information regarding tenants too.

[gvsteve]

I just want to say how happy I am that Greenville still has a living, thriving, pretty well run, upscale-but-not ridiculously-upscale mall. A lot of places can't say this.

[vistatiger]

Haywood had a small junior Meyers Arnold too. That entire space became the Food Court.

McAlister had a small sporting goods anchor on the lower level of the Ivey's building after they closed. Do not remember the name. The mall renovated the lower level of Ivey's into an extension of the mall space. The mall had a Morrison's and Baskin Robbins as well on the right of the center entrance and an Eckerds then later Fatz Cafe on the left where Eggs Up Grill is now.

McAlister had a fire at one point a few weeks before Christmas. It started in a World Bazaar store if I remember correctly. Ivey's sustained quite a bit of smoke damage and was closed for a while and remodeled.

Some things I remember about Greenville Mall were a McCrory Five and Dime near the original Montgomery Ward and a small Plitt Cinema at the mall entrance closest to the original Montgomery Ward. Greenvile Mall had a soaring water fountain in the
center of the mall.(much larger than Haywood's) They ruined that mall with the 90's renovation IMO by getting rid of that and turning everything white and teal. It had wood high vaulted ceilings and that fountain pre renovations. The wood lodge style high ceilings in the middle of Cabela's reminds me now of the old ones at Greenville Mall. Always thought GM was the better looking and most interesting of the three malls when it opened.

[GVLNATIVE]

Bell Tower Mall's main attractions were Woolco and the Towers Four movie theater (which lasted until maybe 1987).


The mall itself was a short east-west corridor with maybe 5 stores per segment, and a short north-south corridor, forming a cross. The interior had brick walls and carpeting.

There was a Baskin-Robbins at the entrance. I remember going to the mall in the early 1980s and there was pretty much nothing there except a BJ Music, at the northwest intersection of the two corridors, and (literally) a laundromat at the main entrance as well. The rest of the stores were closed.



I remember going there regularly in the 1970s but have pretty much zero recollection of the stores inside, but there are some directories floating around online. I don't think you missed much: they were mostly stores that I'd never heard of, apart from an Open Book and an Eckerd's. No wonder it faded pretty quickly.



I went to McAlister Square all the time in the 80s and early 90s. It was consistently a well-maintained, fully-leased mall until the mid-1990s. At least in the 80s, it had plenty of nice stores in it, such as Heyward Mahon (a Hart-Schaffner-Marx-owned local chain). I was surprised to see the mall close. Once Dillard's left, stores here and there closed, and once Eckerd's and then Belk closed, it ended pretty quickly.



The 1981 fire at McAlister Square was a huge event; I recall watching it (on TV) and "I Survived the McAlister Square Fire" T-shirts were common afterwards.


Greenville Mall originally had the same mid-tier and lower-end stores that every other mall of the era had. It was pretty run-down and vacant by the early 1990s. I think that's why the renovation didn't work: it was a really, really nice mall after it was renovated, but people were already set in their ways (and hadn't heard of Parisian, which was a very nice store) at Haywood.



I never cared for Haywood and regret that it's the only mall left.



There is a "Greenville Remember When" and "I Grew Up in Greenville, SC in the 50s, 60s and 70s" group on Facebook. both have extensive information about all of these malls.

[Piljam]

I remember McAlister Square had a pretty sweet arcade in the early 90's called Tilt. Then there was the one at Haywood called Aladdin's Castle. Good times!

[vistatiger]

Parisian was a good store in Alabama and Georgia but that Parisian store was small and didn't have a very good selection compared to their Atlanta and Birmingham stores. Saks then tried the Tennessee based Proffitt's store there and Westgate and added a home department which I thought was a better fit for Greenville but it didn't matter in the end because Belk acquired both the Parisian and Proffitts chains from Saks.

JBWhite and Ward's always seemed to be the main draws at Greenville Mall. An employee at Haywood told me once Haywood originally tried to lure JBWhite away from GM to anchor the new wing instead of Dillards. Didn't matter there either as Dillard's ended up acquiring the JBWhite chain.

[GVLNATIVE]

Parisian was great and I miss it: the South's version of Lord & Taylor.


Here's a tenant list for Bell Tower Mall. See? You didn't miss anything by not shopping there. Nor did anyone else.


https://everipedia.org/wiki/lang_en/Bell_Tower_Mall

[WhitewaterVol]

The Eckerd at McAlister Square also had a separate Eckerd branded restaurant. Both stores made me think that they must have originally been Walgreens Agency stores.

Was their an older mall off of Wade Hampton in the building that is now Bob Jones Elementary? I seem to vaguely remember stories of a Walgreens store located there along with some other stores.

[gville75]

Maybe not technically a mall, but remember when there was some shopping on a few floors of the mill on Mills Avenue, where the Handlebar was originally?

[vistatiger]

Originally Posted by WhitewaterVol

The Eckerd at McAlister Square also had a separate Eckerd branded restaurant. Both stores made me think that they must have originally been Walgreens Agency stores.

Was their an older mall off of Wade Hampton in the building that is now Bob Jones Elementary? I seem to vaguely remember stories of a Walgreens store located there along with some other stores.

Seems like an Eckerd Drug and Winn Dixie were there at one point. Also an old cinema on the lower level that I remember well.