Westfield Coastal

**Westfield Coastal** (formerly **Westfield Shoppingtown Coastal**, and **Coastal Mall**) is a shopping complex in Richardstown, North Carolina. Anchor stores include Belk, JCPenney, Dillards, Macy's, and Best Buy. Junior anchor stores include Dave and Busters, and Ruby Tuesday.

## Westfield Coastal

### Owner

Brookfield Properties Retail Group (95%)Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield (60%)

## History

Before 1987, the land was originally the home for a airport called Matchboxtown International Airport, in 1986, the airport relocated.

In 1987, The Rouse Company and May Centers announced to build a two story enclosed shopping mall in the land where it used to be the home for the airport. They chosed the name Coastal Mall, derived from the East Coast. Construction began in November 1987.

In 1989, the mall opened with 5 anchor tenants, Sears, Spencers-Belk, Ivey's, JCPenney, and Thalhimer's. It featured almost 200 stores as well.

Just a year later, Ivey's was acquired by Dillards and was rebranded to that latter.

In April 1991, The Rouse Company sold its shares of the mall to May Centers.

In 1993, CenterMark Properties was sold to a consortium of Westfield Holdings Ltd., General Growth Properties, and Whitehall Street Real Estate L.P. III. In 1996, General Growth sold its share of CenterMark to Westfield, which enabled Westfield to add these properties to its existing collection of properties and rebrand all of their new acquisitions to the Westfield brand.

In 1998, the mall was renamed Westfield Shoppingtown Coastal, dropping the shoppingtown name in 2005.

In March 2000, the mall added a sixth anchor store Best Buy, and a few outparcel tenants include, Verizon Wireless, Time Warner Cable Store, Ruby Tuesday, Gattiland a entertainment center place, and a USPS post office.

On September 9, 2006, Hecht's was rebranded as Macy's.

In 2012, Best Buy originally closed due to underperformance, but was reopened in October 2016.

In 2016, Gattiland closed down due to lease expiring.

On July 23, 2017, Dave and Busters came to the mall.

At that point, the mall has over 300 stores.

In September 2017, it was reported that Westfield Corporation was considering sell the mall due to it being a non-core property. In November 2017, the 90 percent of the mall was sold to Rouse Properties. Westfield retained 60 percent of the mall. Mall management was retained.

In June 2018, Westfield Corporation was acquired by Unibail-Rodamco.

In January 2019, Sears property was purchased by Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, as part of the bankruptcy procedures of Sears Holdings.

In March 2019, it was reported that Transform Holdco LLC wants to purchase the Sears property from Westfield. But in April 2019, following a lawsuit of its chairman and owner Eddie Lampert, the deal was called off.

That same month, it was announced that the property is going to be redeveloped for a new Sears Home and Life store and a Panera Bread restaurant.

On April 28, 2019, it was announced that Sears would be closing in July 2019 to make way for the redevelopment of the property, liquidation sales will start in early May. The store actually closed on June 22, 2019. Demolition of Sears building will begin on June 26, 2019.

## Anchors

### Current

* Belk
* JCPenney
* Dillards
* Best Buy
* Macy's