Once a premier shopping destination, Slidell’s mall is nearly empty. What’s in its future?

It was the late 1980s, and from her perch at the Things Remembered kiosk, Karen Dufour could watch a large part of her world turn at Slidell’s North Shore Square mall.

North Shore Square, the lone shopping mall in St. Tammany Parish, played an outsized role in the lives of countless teens, dressed in acid-washed jeans and oversized shirts prowling the food court, arcade and corridors. Dufour included.

The Slidell High School student could look up from her monogramming machine to catch the eye of friends working in nearby stores. Other friends would stop by to cut up. Later, there might be dinner at Chick-fil-A.

“Everybody you knew was there,” Dufour, 51, said recently. “We all grew up in that mall. I even learned to drive in that big parking lot.”

Dufour lives in Mid-City now, but North Shore Square still holds a place in her heart. And like many others, she often finds herself wondering what will become of the once-bustling shopping area that now has only a few stores.

“It would be really nice to see something happen there,” Dufour said.

Caught in the same retail spiral that consumed countless other malls across the country, only three stores remain to bring people into the vast parking lots at North Shore Square — At Home, the popular Dillard’s Clearance Center, and Conn’s HomePlus, a national chain that filed for bankruptcy in July and plans to close its Louisiana stores along with 170 others across the South.

North Shore Square also faced competition from the Fremaux Town Center, an open-air shopping center that opened in 2014 and drew shoppers to a different part of the city.  

The mall’s interior has been closed since 2019. At that time, its owner, Morguard, a Canadian company that owns or manages more than $17 billion in real estate across North America, announced it would instead concentrate on leasing the anchor stores that face busy Northshore Boulevard.

But those efforts have been hit or miss, as evidenced by the soon-to-be-closed Conn’s HomePlus store.

North Shore Square is no anomaly. Across the metro area, malls that once drove bustling retail economies have been shuttered or are undergoing transformations to once again be relevant.

While Lakeside Shopping Center in Metairie remains an economic powerhouse as a mall, the Esplanade in Kenner is closed and for sale again after a mixed-use rehab plan that included hundreds of apartments stalled.

The former Clearview Mall has become Clearview City Center, a mixed-use development that includes a $115 million Ochsner “super clinic” that was built in the old Sears location and a $55 million luxury apartment complex now under construction.

But other old malls, such as Belle Promenade in Marrero and the Lake Forest Plaza in New Orleans East are now long gone.

Redeveloping old shopping malls is no simple task.

“It’s extremely expensive,” said Robert Hand, a broker at Louisiana Commercial Realty.

And after a site has been vacant for long periods, the real estate depreciates, he said.

“Being empty leads to problems,” Hand said. “Vacant properties — you can’t just turn a switch and get it back up and running.”

Slidell officials have worked with St. Tammany Parish’s economic development agency, St. Tammany Corp., as well as Morguard to push some kind of redevelopment of North Shore Square, which sits on a highly visible piece of real estate at Interstate 12 and Northshore Boulevard.

“Redeveloping that mall has been a priority for a while now,” said Chris Masingill, CEO of St. Tammany Corp. “We’ve had several engagements with national prospects but none have come to fruition yet.”

Slidell Mayor Greg Cromer said he’s shown the property “at least a dozen times in the six years I’ve been mayor.”

Ideas for possible uses have varied, Cromer said.

“Movie set, office space, some kind of health care center. All kinds of things. One (Slidell City Council member) even floated the idea of a bond issue to purchase it” and then get St. Tammany Corp. to help market it, he said.

Cromer said the special taxing district the City Council created around the mall to help raise money for improvements has been dissolved but could be reinstated “if the right tenant comes along.”

That “right tenant” remains elusive, Cromer and others say.

One thing it likely won’t ever be again?

“Nobody ever talks about it going back to being a mall,” Cromer said.

In 2017, a Morguard official said the company was exploring ways to redevelop the mall as an outdoor shopping and living area.

Responding to recent questions about any prospects or plans for North Shore Square, Morguard issued a statement.

“We are currently in the planning stage for the mall’s future. Our focus is on finding the right tenants for the property’s available space,” the statement from Associate Vice President Joshua Nolan said in part.

The 621,000-square-foot Slidell mall opened in 1985 and soon became an economic engine, drawing shoppers — and the aforementioned teenagers — from across the region and churning out sales tax revenues.

“There were so many great stores there,” Dufour said. “The Gap, obviously. You had Nine West. The Limited — that was another great store for girls.”

At one point it also featured five anchor stores, including Sears, Mervyns and the Dillards, as well as a six-screen movie theater.

“I remember it always being crowded and really festive,” said Mandy Athey, who also worked at the Things Remembered kiosk and now lives in Arizona. “And you’d see all kinds of people you knew when you went there.”

Masingill said he’s confident something will be done, but when that might happen remains a guess.

“I think everything’s on the table,” he said. “This is a long game.”