This is a vintage photo of the former Forum VI in northwest Greensboro. The 280,000-square-foot mall was originally concieved as an upscale, enclosed counterpart to the open-air Friendly Shopping Center, which is adjacent to its site at the corner of Northline Avenue and Pembroke Road.
Set into a hillside, the innovative building featured three levels of parking and a two-level mall, with office space located in an upper level. It opend in 1976 with Montaldo's clothing store and K&W Cafeteria as anchors but succeeded only briefly. The addition of a food court and a renovated interior during a mid '80s upgrade did nothing to help the mall's fortunes.
The combination of uncomfortably upscale retail, a fortress-like exterior and an accute lack of space for expansion or larger, more popular tenants led to the slow but sure demise of Forum VI, which closed to the public in 1997 (save for K&W Cafeteria) after Montaldo's went out of business and its replacement, Coplon's, relocated to a freestanding space a couple miles away.
In 1998, Forum VI was gutted, refaced and reborn as Signature Place, an office complex that replaced the mall with office space for such companies as UBS, First Citizens Insurance, Novartis Animal Health and, strangely enough, Tanger Factory Outlets. In its present form, it's substantially more successful, though pretty damn ugly.
This is a vintage photo of the former Forum VI in northwest Greensboro. The 280,000-square-foot mall was originally concieved as an upscale, enclosed counterpart to the open-air Friendly Shopping Center, which is adjacent to its site at the corner of Northline Avenue and Pembroke Road.
Set into a hillside, the innovative building featured three levels of parking and a two-level mall, with office space located in an upper level. It opend in 1976 with Montaldo's clothing store and K&W Cafeteria as anchors but succeeded only briefly. The addition of a food court and a renovated interior during a mid '80s upgrade did nothing to help the mall's fortunes.
The combination of uncomfortably upscale retail, a fortress-like exterior and an accute lack of space for expansion or larger, more popular tenants led to the slow but sure demise of Forum VI, which closed to the public in 1997 (save for K&W Cafeteria) after Montaldo's went out of business and its replacement, Coplon's, relocated to a freestanding space a couple miles away.
In 1998, Forum VI was gutted, refaced and reborn as Signature Place, an office complex that replaced the mall with office space for such companies as UBS, First Citizens Insurance, Novartis Animal Health and, strangely enough, Tanger Factory Outlets. In its present form, it's substantially more successful, though pretty damn ugly.
Bellevue Square in, well, Bellevue, Wa. has the same infrastructure as Forum VI, but remained wildly successful because, how can I put this delicately, everyone in the area is rich beyond your wildest dreams. Same approximate year of inception, and may have taken on a few adjustments here and there, but all in all...... I think an open-format, three-story mall (parking first!!!!) still works well in this particular demographic.....
ReplyDeleteSo you think glass and steel is less attractive than 20 billion pounds of concrete? huh. I'm amazed they could implode it......
That place looked like an office building from the get go--who would shop there?!
ReplyDeleteI remember that mall. I used to go there a lot. You'd have to go up an escalator from the parking deck to get to the mall. Overall, it was a pretty neat place.
ReplyDeleteIn the 1970's, developers convinced that ANY mall would be a runaway success...this mall was somewhat ill-concieved and represents the over-building that brought the shopping center industry to its knees by 1990.
ReplyDeleteI was just there today at the K&W, guys. It still looks the same as the last picture with the glass and steel.
ReplyDeleteHeather: Forum VI was a pretty good idea for the time, but unlike Bellevue Square, the neighborhood folks were only mildly rich. The ironic part is that the somewhat down on its luck open-air mall next door it was designed to augment is now where all the upscale stores are. Shows how patterns shift.
Actually, they didn't implode it, they just stripped all the upper story walls and gutted the interior.
The exterior does look more modern with the mirrored glass, but only slightly. Kind of like they shifted from 1976 to 1978.
Anita: Believe it or not, that was a hot-looking mall for 1976. You think that's ugly, you should see Four Seasons Town Centre across town.
Billy: I thought Forum VI was incredibly sophisticated back in the day. I liked it a lot, though it got a little dead towards the end. We used to go up to Montaldo's for Mom, Bernard Shepherd for Dad and to Kabuto and K&W to eat.
Mitch: Like Heather was suggesting, that mall was considered the next wave in design for upscale malls at the time. It had great ideas behind it and a neighborhood the developer thought was perfect for that kind of development.
What they didn't plan on was a recession, the need for possible expansion, and the revival of open-air shopping complexes. Friendly Shopping Center next door begat Forum VI and figutatively "ate its young."
I know this comment is over a year late, but I'm from Greensboro and remember Forum VI well from my childhood. It really was a neat small mall, and possibly one of the first "mixed use" developments in the area (there were offices on the top floors.... which arguably counts as mixed use--retail and office--right?). In addition to upscale retail and the food court, there were several nice restaurants located in Forum VI: A Japanese steakhouse and sushi restaurant named Kabuto was on the first floor, and two nice restaurants were on the second/food court floor. The santa at Forum VI was always the best Santa in town according to my mom...
ReplyDeleteIt's definately pionnered suburban mixed-use in Greensboro.
ReplyDeleteI echo your sentiments. It was a great little mall.
My parents owned The Hamburger Place in the food court. I worked there as a teenager, good memories.
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