Huntington 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 ...

in the village of Barboursville in Cabell County in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its so ...

West Virginia West Virginia is a mountainous U.S. state, state in the Southern United States, Southern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States.The United States Census Bureau, Census Bureau and the Association of American ...

. Currently the largest mall in West Virginia, it opened on February 3, 1981 and features more than 150 retailers.

Anchor store In North American, Australian and New Zealand retail, an "anchor tenant", sometimes called an "anchor store", "draw tenant", or "key tenant", is a considerably larger tenant in a shopping mall, often a department store or retail chain. They are ...

s include Dick's Sporting Goods,

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 ...

Macy's Macy's is an American department store chain founded in 1858 by Rowland Hussey Macy. The first store was located in Manhattan on Sixth Avenue between 13th and 14th Streets, south of the present-day flagship store at Herald Square on West 34 ...

TJ Maxx TJ Maxx (stylized as T•J•maxx) is an American discount department store chain. It has more than 1,000 stores in the United States, making it one of the largest clothing retailers in the country. TJ Maxx is the flagship chain of the TJX Comp ...

HomeGoods HomeGoods is a chain of home furnishing stores headquartered in Framingham, Massachusetts Framingham () is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts, United States. Incorporated in 1700, it is located in Midd ...

, and a Cinemark theater. Other major tenants include

Books-A-Million Books-A-Million, Inc., also known as BAM!, is a bookstore chain in the United States, operating 260 stores in 32 states. Stores range in size from 4,000 to 30,000 square feet and sell books, magazines, manga, collectibles, toys, technology, a ...

Old Navy Old Navy is an American clothing and accessories retailing company owned by multinational corporation Gap Inc. It has corporate operations in the Mission Bay, San Francisco, Mission Bay neighborhood of San Francisco, California. The largest of t ...

and a trade school known as Woody Williams Center for Advanced Learning and Careers which is under construction. The mall is owned by Cafaro Company of

Youngstown, Ohio Youngstown is a city in Mahoning County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Ohio, 11th-most populous city in Ohio with a population of 60,068 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. The Mahoning ...

History

The Huntington Mall opened on February 3, 1981, about east of downtown Huntington near exit 20 of

Interstate 64 Interstate 64 (I-64) is an east–west Interstate Highway in the Eastern United States. Its western terminus is at Interstate 70, I-70, U.S. Route 40 (US 40), and U.S. Route 61, US 61 in Wentzville, Missouri. Its eastern ter ...

. At the time, it included

, Lazarus, Stone & Thomas, and

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 ...

as its anchor stores. When the mall's Foot Locker store opened,

tennis Tennis is a List of racket sports, racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent (singles (tennis), singles) or between two teams of two players each (doubles (tennis), doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket st ...

player Bobby Riggs made an appearance at the mall, challenging mall employees to a game of tennis.

Phar-Mor Phar-Mor (stylized as ) was a United States chain of discount drug stores, based in Youngstown, Ohio, and founded by Michael I. Monus, Michael "Mickey" Monus and David Shapira in 1982. Some of its stores used the names Pharmhouse and Rx Place ( ...

, a discount pharmacy chain, was later added to the mall as its fifth anchor in 1990. Stone & Thomas was converted to Elder-Beerman in 1998 when the chain was acquired. A year later, Borders Books & Music opened its first West Virginia store at the mall.

, Steve & Barry's and local chain Dawahares were later added to the mall as well. After Phar-Mor closed in 2002, it became the second Dick's Sporting Goods in the state. In mid-2008, it was announced that Cinemark would open a new movie theater at the mall, replacing the vacated six-screen complex that closed in 2006 and an adjacent cafeteria (which use to be Morrison's Cafeteria). This new theater opened in early 2009. Borders Books closed in 2011, due to the company's bankruptcy.

later replaced it. Parent company The Bon-Ton closed the Elder-Beerman in the mall on January 31, 2016, and the space was split among

Forever 21 F21 OpCo LLC, trade name, doing business as Forever 21, was a multinational fast-fashion retailer. It was originally founded as Fashion 21 in Highland Park, Los Angeles, Highland Park, Los Angeles in 1984.Forever 21History & Facts, n.d. Retrieved ...

, and

. On August 6, 2019, Sears announced it would be closing its location at the mall in late October, while the auto center closed in late August. Later that year on October 2, 2019, Forever 21 announced that it would also be closing in late 2019 after filing for

Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code ( Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, w ...

. On November 3, 2023

Dave & Buster's Dave & Buster's Entertainment, Inc. (stylized in all caps) is an American restaurant and entertainment business headquartered in Dallas. Each Dave & Buster's location has a full-service restaurant, full bar, and a video arcade; the latter of w ...

announced that it will be opening a location within the mall at the prior Forever 21 location. Woody Williams Center for Advanced Learning and Careers is currently under construction and is taking up both floors of the former Sears. The building is expected to house a trade school which will open in 2026.

Impact

Huntington Mall is the largest mall in the state of West Virginia. When the mall was built, the only other businesses around it were two bars and an

Exxon Exxon Mobil Corporation ( ) is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Spring, Texas, a suburb of Houston. Founded as the largest direct successor of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, the modern company was form ...

gas station. Since the mall's opening, several retailers have been built around the mall, including four motels and several restaurants, as well as a

Walmart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores in the United States and 23 other ...

Supercenter, the first

Best Buy Best Buy Co., Inc. is an American multinational consumer electronics retailer headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota. Originally founded by Richard M. Schulze and James Wheeler in 1966 as an audio specialty store called Sound of Music, it was r ...

in West Virginia, and the first Sheetz gas station/convenience store in southern West Virginia. Huntington Mall has also averaged $375 million in retail trade, significantly increasing the tax revenue for Barboursville's budgets.

References

External links

* {{Huntington, West Virginia 1981 establishments in West Virginia Shopping malls established in 1981 Shopping malls in West Virginia Buildings and structures in Cabell County, West Virginia Tourist attractions in Cabell County, West Virginia Cafaro Company Barboursville, West Virginia