This is the fourth part in a seven part series about the Great Mall of the Great Plains. Here are the links to parts one, two, three, five, six, and seven.
An aerial view of the completed mall in 1998.
After more than a decade of planning (and revising plans, and waiting, and going back to the drawing board, and planning some more, and then finally building), Olathe was about to get its mall.
On July 23rd, 1997, the Great Mall of the Great Plains held a job fair at the Olathe Holiday Inn. The Kansas City Business Journal reported that more than 2,000 people showed up from all over the metro area, quickly putting to rest fears that Johnson County’s low unemployment rate would cause problems. The mall’s general manager, Jeff Dozier, estimated that mall tenants were able to fill at least 1,000 positions on that day alone, and store managers said that they would have enough staff to open in August.
The Great Mall 16’s box office in 1997. (Photo courtesy of Wood Dickinson)
Dickinson Theatres’ deluxe, 57,000 square-foot Great Mall 16 theater opened on July 25th, slightly ahead of the rest of the mall. The KC Star’s film critic, Robert Butler, wrote a glowing review of the theater, saying, “Its decorative details seem to have been fashioned from surplus NASA parts. Its lobby and corridors are big, airy and intentionally dark; the deep purple walls are splattered with droplets of white and this, combined with ultraviolet lighting, gives the impression that moviegoers are walking through an endless starfield. […] It’s easy to imagine yourself at a busy spaceport, awaiting a flight to another planet.” Their opening day lineup featured Air Force One (which was the theater’s first film to play for the public, starting at 10:15 AM), Contact, Nothing to Lose, George of the Jungle, Good Burger, Face Off, Men In Black, My Best Friend’s Wedding, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and Hercules. More than 25,000 customers visited the theater in its first weekend.
The Great Mall 16’s lobby in 1997. (Photo courtesy of Wood Dickinson)
Finally, on Thursday August 14th, 1997, it was time for the rest of the mall to open.
Cars zoomed around the Great Mall’s parking lot early in the morning, gradually filling in remaining spaces closest to the movie theater entrance on the north side of the mall. There was a stage full of seated developers, city officials, and various other individuals who had been involved with the project. A dozen or so packed rows of folding chairs faced the stage. A woman (who I was unable to identify for sure, but I think it was Louise DuArt, a comedian and impersonator who did a series of television and print advertisements with the mall) welcomed everybody. A young man sang the national anthem. Herb Glimcher, David Glimcher, Michael Glimcher, Jordon Perlmutter, Ethan Penner (of Nomura Asset Corp., Glimcher’s financier), and Kansas’s Lieutenant Governor Gary Sherrer all gave short speeches, and at the end a car was given away.
Finally, just a little before 10:00, almost twenty people with scissors, plus a few kids from the YMCA, all approached the ribbon stretched across the front of the stage. They snipped, hundreds of balloons were released into the sky, brass band music started blasting through speakers, and the mall was opened. Shoppers flooded inside the 812,000 square-foot mall looking for bargains. You can watch the whole ceremony on YouTube here.
The movie theater entrance as it looked in 2012. (Photo by Mike Kalasnik of Dead and Dying Retail)
A handful of stores weren’t set up in time for the grand opening, and a several unleased spaces remained empty, but shoppers had plenty to choose from, including big names like: Burlington Coat Factory, Big Dog Outlet, Bugle Boy Outlet, Claire’s Boutique, Designer Shoe Warehouse, Dillard’s Clearance Center (nabbed from Indian Springs Shopping Center), Eddie Bauer, Famous Footwear, Foot Locker Outlet, Function Junction, Hot Topic, K.B. Toy, Kitchen & Co., Levi’s, Linens N Things, London Fog Outlet, Marshalls, Noble House Jewelry, Old Navy, Oshman’s SuperSports USA, and a Tommy Hilfiger Warehouse Store.
There were also smaller names: The Gothic Shop, The Great Train Store, The Icing, Let’s Talk Cellular, Just Sports, Kansas Konnection, Leather Mode, MacBirdie Golf, Ritz Camera, Rug City, San Francisco Music Box Company, and There’s Only Music Stuff.
Food choices upon opening included: Cinnabon, Cocina Fresca, Flamers, Frulatti, Gloria Jean’s Gourmet Coffees, Johnny Rockets, Mr. Bulky, Nacho Fast, Orange Julius, Pizza USA, Topsy’s Popcorn, and Wetzel’s Pretzels.
And, of course, let’s not forget the best names in the bunch: Jeepers (the indoor amusement park for kids) and Foozles (a book and calendar store).
The Sports and Adventure Entrance, 2012. (Photo by Mike Kalasnik of Dead and Dying Retail)
Now, for accuracy’s sake I want to say that technically a few of the anchor stores (which had their own doors to the outside) did a soft opening earlier in the week, but Thursday was the grand opening for the majority of the mall.
As they entered, shoppers saw that the mall had a “racetrack” design, meaning it was basically a big long block of stores in the middle, a wide hallway (racetrack) going in a circle around that, and then a long line of stores forming a square around that, all enclosed to be one space. It was divided up into four sections: Fashions, Home and Hobby, Sports and Adventure, and Technology and Entertainment. Customers could park near the store or section they wanted to visit and get in and out quickly, or they could stay longer to tour the whole mall.
As for the aesthetic? In an August 20th article, Mike Hendricks of the KC Star wrote a better description of it than I ever could: “The new Great Mall of the Great Plains is retailing in the surreal. Salvador Dali with a cash register. Black-and-beige-checked carpeting collides with purple and black stripes, which crashes into a rust and peach floral print rug, then careens into a leopard-skin-patterned carpet dyed purple, yellow and black. Suspended from one ceiling, lighting fixtures that look like stalactites in Bridal Cave. Sprouting from the floor, green pyramids resembling miniature Aztec temples. Here and there, steel globes the size of Volkswagens spin atop towers constructed from some giant Erector set. And from the belly of these Erector beasts, television sets bark helpful shopping hints to weary shoppers resting in oversized, vinyl-upholstered chairs and benches straight from the set of some sequel to ‘Bus Stop.’”
A sampling of the carpet on display at the Great Mall. 2013 (Photo from Kym H on Foursquare)
Personal note: I’ve been working on this history on and off for about six months, and every time I’ve mentioned it to somebody who is familiar with the mall, they have talked about the carpet.
Oshman’s SuperSports USA’s 65,000 square-foot store was one of the most popular draws in the opening days, and it sounded pretty cool. The KC Star’s Joyce Smith wrote that it had “a batting cage, a basketball court, a golf simulator, an in-line skating lane, a putting green and a tennis/racquetball court.”
You can watch an hour of footage of the mall’s opening day on YouTube here.
Upon opening, the mall was 90% occupied with eight anchors (depending on how you defined that), and 130 other retailers. The mall expected 50,000 people on opening day, and reported that nearly 73,000 showed up. According to the Kansas City Business Journal, the mall had logged its one-millionth visitor by mid-September. Around the same time the head of Olathe’s traffic unit, Sergeant Greg Scott, told the KC Star that during peak shopping hours, cars were often lined up on the 151st Street exit of I-35. It seemed like the developers and Olathe had a hit on their hands. Developers, mall staff, Olathe officials, and regular residents alike expressed satisfaction and pride with Olathe’s unique new mall.
People were optimistic. Estimates at the time were that the mall would generate $900,000 in new sales tax revenue during the next year, and could create as many as 3,000 jobs. The mall’s tourism director was organizing with tour bus companies, hoping for 200 busloads of tourists to visit by the end of 1997, and then another 300 busloads throughout 1998. Plans were still on for the entertainment addition, the so-called “Phase II” of the mall, which would bring the mall to 1,200,000 square-feet (the size of Oak Park Mall at the time) and was expected to be finished in 1999.
The Home and Hobby Entrance, 2012. (Photo by Mike Kalasnik of Dead and Dying Retail)
1997 chugged along with a few more newsworthy items. For example: On September 3rd, Erin Murphy, the actress who played Tabitha on Bewitched made an appearance at Autographs Plus inside the mall.
Perhaps more substantial news that fall came when Kansas City, Missouri, mayor Emmanuel Cleaver met with suburban representatives and called upon the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority to do a better job of connecting the urban poor to suburban jobs. Public transportation options were discussed – such as a commuter rail line (using existing tracks) that would connect downtown Kansas City to Olathe – but no clear path of action seemed to emerge.
On a related note, the mall held another job fair in October, with 50 stores looking to fill 350 to 500 positions for the holidays.
The first mention I could find of a store leaving the mall – other than the Tommy Hilfiger store, which was only ever a ten-day test store – came in November when Dinamation left and was quickly replaced by a Converse shoe store. Dinamation was apparently a company that made robotic dinosaurs for displays in malls, and later had some of their work featured at the old T-Rex Cafe at the Legends.
In late November, Kitchen & Co. brought the Johnson County Community College ice-carving team into the mall to create a sleigh-and-reindeer sculpture with chainsaws. And that December, the mall was truly welcomed into the community when the mayor’s Christmas tree lighting ceremony was moved from its traditional downtown location and into the Great Mall’s food court. Choirs from three Olathe high schools performed with the Olathe Community Chorus, and KMBC Channel 9’s weatherman Brian Busby and sportscaster David Stewart served as the masters of ceremony.
As the year closed out, there were reports of it being a great year for area retailers (other than the Indian Springs mall, which had lost its Dillard’s), and a very good year for Olathe, thanks in part to the Great Mall.
Thank you for reading this history of the Great Mall of the Great Plains. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed researching and writing it. I would like to thank all of the journalists at the Kansas City Star, the Kansas City Business Journal, and The Olathe News whose hard work I drew from. I would also like to thank everybody who provided pictures and/or anecdotes. Special thanks to Bryan for research tips and spending countless hours walking malls with me. And finally, thank you to all of the people who made the mall possible, and everybody who worked and shopped there and made it what it was during its all-too-short existence. If you have any memories about the mall you would like to share, please leave us a comment, or shoot me an email at kellerm@jocolibrary.org. Also, if you have any pictures of the mall you’d like to share, please send them my way!
-Mike Keller, Johnson County Library
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