Edgewater Mall is an enclosed

shopping mall A shopping mall (or simply mall) is a large indoor shopping center, usually Anchor tenant, anchored by department stores. The term ''mall'' originally meant pedestrian zone, a pedestrian promenade with shops along it, but in the late 1960s, i ...

located in

Biloxi, Mississippi Biloxi ( ; ) is a city in Harrison County, Mississippi, United States. It lies on the Gulf Coast of the United States, Gulf Coast in southern Mississippi, bordering the city of Gulfport, Mississippi, Gulfport to its west. The adjacent cities ar ...

, United States. Opened in 1963, its anchor stores are

Belk Belk, Inc. is an American department store chain founded in 1888 by William Henry Belk in Monroe, North Carolina, with nearly 300 locations in 16 states. Belk stores and Belk.com offer apparel, shoes, accessories, cosmetics, home furnishings, a ...

Dillard's Dillard's, Inc. is an American department store chain with approximately 267 stores in 29 states and headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas. Currently, the largest number of stores are located in Texas with 57 and Florida with 42. The company a ...

JCPenney Penney OpCo LLC , Trade name, doing business as JCPenney (colloquially Penney's and abbreviated JCP) is an American department store chain store, chain with 649 stores across 49 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. It is managed as part of the Catalys ...

, and Premiere Cinemas.

History

The mall was built in 1963 as Edgewater Plaza. Among its first tenants were Godchaux's, Gayfers, and J. J. Newberry. In the early 1970s, the mall was expanded with a new wing ending at

Sears Sears, Roebuck and Co., commonly known as Sears ( ), is an American chain of department stores and online retailer founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosen ...

. The addition of this wing required the demolition of the Edgewater Gulf Hotel. Sears opened in July 1972. J. J. Newberry closed in 1979 and became

the same year. McCrory Stores operated a dime store in the mall until 1996. A year later, the mall underwent a major expansion and renovation program that included the addition of

McRae's McRae's was a mid-range regional department store chain founded and based in Jackson, Mississippi, with locations in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Florida. The nameplate was in existence for more than a century. History Samuel P. McRae f ...

(now

) as an anchor, along with the expansion of the JCPenney and Sears stores. A second story was added to the Sears store, while the JCPenney store was expanded into a space previously occupied by a Jitney Jungle supermarket. The Gayfers chain was sold to

in 1998. The mall was damaged by

Hurricane Katrina Hurricane Katrina was a powerful, devastating and historic tropical cyclone that caused 1,392 fatalities and damages estimated at $125 billion in late August 2005, particularly in the city of New Orleans and its surrounding area. ...

in 2005. Sears was the first store to reopen after the hurricane. Dillard's, which suffered the most damage from the hurricane, was rebuilt and did not reopen until 2008. In June 2017, Sears announced that its store at the mall would close in September 2017, dropping the number of anchors from 4 to 3. In November 2018, Premiere Cinemas opened in the former Sears location.

References

External links

Official website
{{Shopping malls in Mississippi Shopping malls established in 1963 Shopping malls in Mississippi Buildings and structures in Biloxi, Mississippi

History

See also

References

External links