'The color of money was everywhere': The birth of Northridge mall in Milwaukee

After two decades of never-realized redevelopment plans, absentee ownership, acts of vandalism and arson, and even a viral video in which it was transformed into a winter wonderland, Milwaukee's Northridge mall, which closed in 2003, is finally heading toward demolition.

After years of wrangling with the China-based company that bought the sprawling northwest side property in 2008, the city of Milwaukee acquired it via property tax foreclosure in January 2024. Demolition, clearing the way for redevelopment of the site, is expected to be completed by the fall of 2025.

But when it opened its doors on Aug. 2, 1972, Northridge was a shiny new piece of Milwaukee development history.

On July 14, 1965, the Kohl family, including father Max and son (and future Senator and Milwaukee Bucks owner) Herb, announced plans for a massive, $50 million shopping center at the northwest corner of North 76th Street and West Brown Deer Road. The center was to be anchored by a Kohl's Department Store — a side business of the family's grocery store chain that was in expansion mode at the time — and what was to be the Milwaukee area's largest Sears store.

The 100-acre-plus site, mostly farmland, had only been formally in the city limits for three years, after Milwaukee won a hard-fought annexation battle over the last part of what had been the town of Granville.

When it was first proposed, Northridge would have been the largest shopping complex in Milwaukee — and the area's first enclosed shopping mall. (Another retail project announced at the same time, Brookfield Square, completed construction in 1967; Southridge, Northridge's slightly larger twin, was proposed in 1967 on South 76th Street in Greendale and opened in 1970.)

While Northridge was under construction, Kohl Corp. President Sidney Kohl announced plans for Northridge Lakes, a $150 million residential complex to the north and east of the shopping mall. The "community created within the boundaries of a major city" would include about 6,000 condominiums and apartments, three artificial lakes and a population bigger than the village of Shorewood, Kohl said when he unveiled the project on June 9, 1969.

Meanwhile, work on the Northridge mall went on. The Kohl family owned 70% of the company developing the mall, with Chicago attorney and developer Archie Siegel (working with Sears) and executives from shopping center developer Taubman Co. owning the rest. The Kohl's Department Store announced for the mall was dropped in favor of three other new anchors: Boston Store, Gimbels and JCPenney.

All four department stores opened the same day as the mall's Aug. 2 grand opening in 1972 — according to the Milwaukee Sentinel's Ray Kenney, the first time in U.S. retail history that four major department stores opened in the same city on the same day. (The "extraordinary event," Kenney wrote, meant that there were five simultaneous ribbon-cutting ceremonies.)

But when it opened, Northridge was more than department stores. At more than 1 million square feet, 51 other stores and restaurants opened on Day 1, with room for another 80.

Among the original lineup: clothing stores ranging from Hughes & Hatcher (menswear) to Casual Corner (women's wear) to Just Pants (what the cool kids of 1972 were wearing); restaurants including Farrell's Ice Cream Parlour and Restaurant; and booksellers including B. Dalton. The mall also had a three-screen movie theater operated by United Artists (it expanded to six screens in 1977).

Also ready for Northridge's opening day: a crew of young women dubbed the "Northridge Starlets," hired to help customers find their way in the sprawling mall.

On opening day, early morning rain didn't scare off the thousands of shoppers and otherwise curious who showed up to check out the latest addition to Milwaukee's retail scene. The parking lots, designed to accommodate 6,550 cars, were filled at several times during the day.

Representatives of the four department stores wore green carnations "as they snipped the green ribbons opening the four stores and the center itself," the Sentinel's Kenney wrote in his first-day story published Aug. 3, 1972.

"The color of money was everywhere."

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: 'The color of money was everywhere': The birth of Northridge mall in Milwaukee