Let’s remember when the Alderwood Mall opened, on this day in 1979 (October 4)
City leaders in the 1960’s needed a reason for people to visit Lynnwood. It would be at least a generation before the city got its own Hooters, but the powers that be couldn’t wait that long. The solution was to open a large shopping mall.
Phil Dougherty of HistoryLink explains:
On October 4, 1979, Alderwood Mall in Lynnwood (Snohomish County) opens. Developed by mall mogul Edward DeBartolo Sr., it becomes an instant hit both for shoppers and walkers who enjoy strolling the mall’s roughly one-mile inner perimeter. Between 2002 and 2004 the mall will undergo a major renovation, adding upscale stores and nearly 200,000 additional square feet of space, which will increase its revenues by nearly 50 percent in just three years. The mall will also be rebranded with a new name: Alderwood. In 2008, the nearly 1.4-million-square-foot mall is one of the largest malls in Washington state, and the second largest employer in Snohomish County, employing 4,000 workers in administrative offices and 175 stores.
Alderwood Mall was a 10-year project in the making, one that for a few years seemed like it might not happen. Plans for the mall in Lynnwood, in southern Snohomish County, were announced in 1969 by Allied Stores, then the owner of Bon Marche. Allied bought 110 acres just west of the interchange of I-5 and I-405 north of Seattle and cleared the land, but tight money and a sluggish economy stalled the project. By the mid-1970s the future mall site was just a large, weed-strewn lot. Finally, Allied sold to developer Edward DeBartolo Sr., one of the biggest mall developers in the United States during the final decades of the twentieth century. DeBartolo was known for moving quickly. Construction of the mall began in 1977 and by August 1979 was completed to the point that employees began stocking shelves in the mall’s Bon Marche store.
Construction moved so fast that as opening day approached on Thursday, October 4, 1979, only about 70 of the mall’s planned 136 stores were open for business. And even then, not all of those stores were fully prepared — a tuxedo shop opened but had no counters, no clothes racks, virtually nothing except a few half-mannequins scattered on the floor, tastefully tailored in tuxes. It would be well into 1980 before all 136 stores in the mall were open.
But no matter. At 9:30 a.m. on opening day DeBartolo and Lynnwood Mayor M. J. Hrdlicka cut the ceremonial ribbon to open the mall, and the rush was on. A wave of 30,000 shoppers surged through Alderwood Mall’s doors during the day and happily meandered through the nearly 1.2 million square foot mall. “This place is beautiful,” gushed one thrilled patron to an Everett Herald reporter. The reporter elaborated: “The mall is characterized by clean lines, functional surfaces … [and] is done in earthtones.”
Good times.
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