City Center Plaza (Appleton, Wisconsin)

City Center Plaza
City Center Plaza
General information
Type	Mixed-use
Location	100 West College Avenue; Appleton, Wisconsin
Construction started	1984
Opened	1987
Owner	Condominium
Design and construction
Developer	The Center Companies

Coordinates: 44°15′44″N 88°24′21″W / 44.26229°N 88.40585°W / 44.26229; -88.40585

City Center Plaza, formerly known as The Avenue Mall, is a mixed-use complex in downtown Appleton, Wisconsin. Built as a shopping mall to connect the city's existing Prange's and Marshall Field's department stores, The Avenue was intended to compete with the newly-opened Fox River Mall in nearby Grand Chute.

History

Precursors

The origins of the complex date back to the opening of the Pettibone-Peabody Company's new department store building in October 1903, Appleton's first four-story structure, on the northeastern corner of College Avenue and Appleton Street.^[1] The store was an expansion of the C.J. Pettibone dry goods store which had existed in Appleton since 1862, when it was established as a branch of a Fond du Lac-based enterprise.^[2] Pettibone-Peabody was acquired by the H.C. Prange Company of Sheboygan, Wisconsin on January 24, 1946, and became the fourth Prange's store.^[3]

Nearby, a Gimbels department store opened on March 11, 1971, on the northwest corner of College Avenue and Morrison Street. Gimbels was subsequently acquired by British American Tobacco in 1973, which incorporated the chain into the BATUS retail group. In May 1986, the company announced it would shut down its Gimbels division, with some of the Wisconsin stores under that name being converted into Marshall Field's locations and others closing. The Appleton Gimbels store was set to close, but an intense lobbying effort connected to the ongoing construction of the mall led BATUS to reopen the store as Marshall Field's on October 8, 1986.^[4]^[5]

Early proposals

The concept of a downtown shopping mall for Appleton was proposed as early as the 1950s, in response to the growth of suburban shopping. Victor Gruen , the architect and planner who would go on to be widely recognized as the creator of the modern American shopping mall, proposed turning College Avenue into an open-air pedestrian mall in a 1954 plan that was never adopted.^[6] For decades, various incarnations of plans were suggested, which were controversial because they generally suggested closing off a portion of College Avenue to vehicle traffic to build a pedestrian space, indoors or outdoors, between existing storefronts.^[7]^[8] Despite these unsuccessful efforts, by 1977 the Appleton Redevelopment Authority agreed that some form of connecting indoor spaces between existing downtown department stores was a necessary and inevitable part of their efforts to revitalize downtown.^[9]

Multiple different designs were drawn up by the Development Control Corporation in 1977 for an enclosed mall downtown that would not block off any part of College Avenue, but this never materialized. A study conducted that year by Hammer, Siler, George Associates found that Appleton already had one of the strongest downtowns for retail in the country, and predicted that a suburban mall would not succeed without the backing of national retailers like Sears and J.C. Penney.^[10] In 1979, it was announced that General Growth Properties would build the Fox River Mall on the western outskirts of town, that Sears and Penney's would vacate their downtown stores to move to the mall when it opened, and that Prange's intended to open a store at the mall without closing its downtown location. With these announcements, plans to redevelop downtown Appleton and encourage major retailers to stay grew more urgent.^[11]^[12]^[13] General Growth had considered proposing a similar downtown mall project before deciding to pursue the suburban project.^[14]

In response to the Fox River Mall's construction, the concept of an enclosed mall downtown was quickly revived with a proposal from the National Redevelopment Company, aiming to build it quickly enough to discourage General Growth from following through on its mall, scheduled for completion in 1984.^[15] After an investigation by the Appleton Post-Crescent exposed National Redevelopment's financial and legal troubles, the development firm was dropped from the project in June 1980, and the Appleton Redevelopment Authority began looking for a new development partner.^[16] However, a study commissioned by the ARA and published at the end of 1980 found that building a large enclosed mall downtown, one capable of competing with the Fox River Mall, would oversaturate the city's retail market and harm both malls, and concluded that the project should be significantly scaled back if not canceled altogether.^[17]

Planning and construction

In November 1982, the Downtown Appleton Task Force was established, and began working with the ARA and other local organizations to revive interest once again in the downtown mall proposal. The group hired Jeremy Mayberg, an architect who had worked on National Redevelopment's proposal for the site, to consult with local businesses and begin drawing up a new set of plans for redevelopment.^[14] The result was Mayberg's "Three Square" proposal, which suggested closing a block of Oneida Street to create a smaller, two-level enclosed mall connecting Prange's to Gimbels, surrounded by two new proposed outdoor plazas which would augment the existing one at Soldiers Square. Local leaders praised the plan as more appealing and more realistic than past versions of the proposal.^[18] The Three Square proposal was almost unanimously endorsed by Appleton City Council in February 1983, although the alderman representing the downtown area was one of its few opponents.^[19]

The proposal was reworked by The Center Companies, which announced its plans to build what would now be called "The Avenue" on February 1, 1984. The "squares" element of the plan had been dropped, but Mayberg's design for the mall concourse had remained essentially intact.^[20]

The construction of the mall would require the demolition of 17 existing buildings between Prange's and Gimbels. Only the Atkins Building, at 100 East College Avenue, would be spared due to its history as the oldest surviving commercial building in the city, having been constructed in 1857.^[21]^[22] The Conway Home for the Elderly, a six-story former hotel building at 128 North Oneida Street, was also left standing.^[23]

Before construction began, the mall's intended opening in the spring of 1986 was pushed back to fall, as developers had run into difficulty recruiting tenants to locate in the building.^[24] The developers had intended for demolition to begin on the site in February 1985,^[25] but this was hampered by delays in the project's financing plan, which was not put in place until June of that year, allowing work on the project to begin.^[26]

Demolition started on July 11, 1985, by which time roughly 50% of the space in the mall was already under lease. The mall's design was described as "historical eclectic", aiming to emulate the heritage of the buildings being demolished and other downtown structures.^[27] With demolition complete, a groundbreaking ceremony was held on November 15, with construction work beginning November 18. By this time, the mall's developers no longer saw it as a rival to the Fox River Mall, which had opened the previous year, but as a complementary project. As one investor put it, "if you want to buy a pair of jeans, you go out there. If you want to buy a unique present for your wife, you go downtown."^[28]

In the midst of construction, BATUS announced in May 1986 that its Gimbels division would shut down, with Milwaukee-area stores converted into Marshall Field's while the Appleton location was expected to close. Hoping to avoid leaving the mall and downtown Appleton as a whole with a major anchor vacancy, local leaders successfully lobbied BATUS to convert the Appleton store into a Marshall Field's as well, opening on October 8, 1986.^[4]^[5] This placed the conversion close to the mall's planned opening date of early October 1986, but that date was pushed back again in August, as developers stated the building would not be enclosed until November, and announced a planned opening in March 1987.^[29]

The Avenue Mall

The Avenue Mall officially opened on March 12, 1987. 16 of the mall's 65 spaces were occupied on opening day, with an additional four businesses then preparing to open in the following months. The mall opened with an advertising campaign marked by the tagline "Bringing back the magic", a reference to Appleton being the birthplace of Harry Houdini .^[30]

Prange's ultimately closed on November 6, 1989.^[31] Marshall Field's was acquired by the Dayton Hudson Corporation in 1990, and the downtown Appleton location was closed in May 1991 as the company prepared to open a Dayton's store at Fox River Mall. This move left downtown Appleton with no department stores, having had four before the opening of the Fox River Mall less than seven years prior.

Herberger's opened a department store in the former Marshall Field's space in July 1993.^[32] In 1996, Herberger's was acquired by Proffitt's. Since Proffitt's had also recently acquired Younkers, which itself had bought out Prange's shortly after it left The Avenue in 1992, it decided to convert the Appleton Herberger's into a Younkers in July 1997. Although another Younkers store already existed at Fox River Mall, Proffitt's promised that it would keep the downtown store open.^[33]^[34] However, the store ultimately closed on February 2, 2002, with the expiration of its first lease option. As the store shut down, it was announced that the mall would seek to replace it with office space, making it the last downtown department store Appleton would see for the foreseeable future.^[35]