Southlake Mall, Formerly Westfield Southlake, is a shopping mall just under an hour away from Chicago in the city of Merrillville, IN along U.S. RT-30. Southlake Mall is the only enclosed regional mall in the northwest side of Indiana and third largest in the state behind Castleton Square in Indianapolis and Glenbrook Square in Fort Wayne.
The mall has many great anchor store choices like:
as well as JCPenney, Dicks Sporting Goods, and Kohl's out parceling the mall.
The mall originally opened in 1974 in Hobart, IN, where the land was annexed from unincorporated in the Ross Township. The mall first opened with only two anchor stores, Sears and JCPenney, Then Carson Pirie Scott and L.S. Aryes followed shortly after. When the mall was long put up for sale in 1999, the Westfield Group purchased the mall and renamed it Westfield Shoppingtown Southlake in 2002, then dropped the Shoppingtown a year later, so the name was just Westfield Southlake.
In 2006, the mall went under a significant expansion, adding Dicks Sporting Goods and Borders Book Store and several surrounding restaurants in the malls parking lot.
The Macy's store was previously an L.S. Aryes until September 9, 2006.
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| Former L.S. Aryes, which changed over to Macy's in 2006 |
In July 2011, Borders Group announced it will close all of its stores by the end of September because of Chapter 7 Bankruptcy Liquidation, which included the Southlake Mall location. When Borders closed, the store was quickly filled by a Books-A-Million.
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| Former Borders Books, now Books-A-Million |
When I visited this mall for the first time in the summer of 2012, it was a 100 degree day and it was a very quick visit on our way back from Lafayette, IN back to Chicago, and the mall, like many others during the time was an american Westfield owned property, were now very few Westfield Mall can be found in America, or at least Illinois or Indiana.
Westfield Group sold the mall and several others to Starwood Capital in September of 2013. When the sale went through, the mall's name reverted to once used Southlake Mall.
Here are some photos of the mall in June 2012:
Here are more photos in December 2012:
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| Former Paint a Penguin |
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| Driving on U.S. RT-30 Northbound- The Westfield Southlake sign can be seen to the right in the distance. |
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