Sarasota Square Mall - Sarasota, FL

In our previous dead mall visit, we toured a true 'zombie' mall- one that was literally rotting, falling apart with every day it remained standing in brazen defiance of health & safety regulations. Today's visit takes us to a mall no less desolate, but owing to more caring owners, one that was in much better condition until the bitter end.

Sarasota Square grew slowly over time into a major regional mall, opening with only two major anchors and 2 junior anchors in 1977. Charter anchors Maas Brothers and JCPenney were quickly joined by Sears in 1979, rounding out the mall to a more modern 3-anchor setup, with junior anchors J Byrons and AMC facing the east side. The mall got it's first major expansion in 1986, as following the closure of J Byrons, the space was carved into a small food court that led into a new east wing to meet a fourth and final anchor, upscale department store Parisian, opening in 1989.

Standard mega merger musical chairs occured across the 90s, with Maas Brothers changing nameplates for Burdines, and Parisian for Dillards, but the mall soldiered on largely unaffected into the 2000s, being acquired by shopping mall conglomerate Westfield, being renamed "Westfield Shoppingtown Sarasota Square" in 2003. Westfield brought the mall's final major remodel, including carving up much of the west wing for a larger food court and a new 12-screen AMC, with the smaller 6-screen AMC and original food court being quietly recycled into more store spaces by 2006. One more nameplate changeover occured in 2005 as Burdines was rolled into Macy's, and the mall settled into it's final shape in 2012, as following the closure of Dillards in 2009, the space was demolished for a new Costco.

The closure of Dillards was perhaps a sign of things to come for the mall, as in 2017 the mall abruptly lost both Macy's and Sears, both spaces never retenanted. Westfield let the mall quietly slip into foreclosure in 2020, and by 2023 things had become so dire that new owners Torbourn Capital announced plans to demolish the mall for a new, mixed use development. It was under this looming closure threat that I finally hauled out across the state in late 2023, camera in hand.

What passes for the mall's "main entrance" is on the east side, shown at the top of this post, with a short hallway leading into the mall's food court and Costco. From this angle you could mistake the mall for fairly active, as Costco's allure filled this side of the parking lot pretty well, but as soon as you get close that illusion falls away.

We're in the 2005 chunk of the mall, so while the spaces are relatively modern, they are no less dead, with the entrance flanked by two large restaurant spaces that last played host to a steakhouse and a bar & grill, and closer to the door is a former mall staple, Ruby Tuesday.

Ducking inside, the story is much the same. The mall's 'foyer' is desolate of tenants, with only two food court tenants clinging to AMC at the rear, surrounded by a sea of empty tables and drywalled over spaces. Despite initial plans to remain on the property, AMC called curtains on October 31st, 2024, though the building was still left intact during demolition.

Turning left brings you to Costco's food court, bustling as always, which also supports the malls only other inline tenants. Both are barely "stores", being sales and display offices for a custom gameroom company and a boat dealership respectively, fighting for customer attention as they chow down on discount hot dogs.

Turning back from Costco, we can venture through the rest of the mall, which is dead as a doornail. This portion of the mall being open to walk was honestly a surprise, as with the only tenants being glued to Costco and AMC, they could have easily walled this portion off, and I imagine any lower tier owner like Kohan or Namdar would have. Luckily for us, it was left open as a grand, opulent hallway to access JCPenney on the other end of the mall.

As soon as you pull away from Costco the mall rapidly becomes pin-drop silent. Most of the time the only thing I heard was my own shoelaces clicking softly against the tile. One highlight is a bounty of intact, classic mall storefronts, which is always nice to see when some malls get a little too happy with the remodels and drywall.

You may have noticed some of those last shots were quite dark, and that's because we've entered this weirdly cavernous space between the newer and older chunks of the mall. I believe this may actually be the original Trellis Food Court, dating to 1986. This is actually quite a cool find, as most of these smaller, 80s food courts were completely obliterated by later remodels. One hopes more of the lights worked back then, though.

Coming to the end of this hallway, we've entered the 'old mall' proper, and reached our only roadblock, that being a line of ropes & stanchions blocking the stub to the former Macy's. I guess no paradise for me here.

A great place to stop at least, under the mall's best and grandest skylight, a welcome respite after the less impressive skylights of the former food court. From here, we can go north towards the operating JCPenney, or south to the former Sears. Let's keep to our theme of desolation, and head for Sears.

Books could be written on the downfall of Sears, but we're just here to look at one location. It's a classic 80s marble facade I've seen variations on across multiple malls, somewhat hidden behind a shuttered playplace. Drywall keeping lookey-loos like myself from peeking inside advertises the mall's other stores, though I imagine it was never updated after Westfield dropped the property, as the fact Justice (bankrupt 2020) is still listed lines up with the mall's foreclosure that same year.

Turning around, we walk towards the only reason this whole stretch is open, JCPenney. The big white splotch of drywall on the left is from H&M, who left the mall amidst it's foreclosure in 2020.

There were a few interesting storefronts down this way, unfortunately I can't pin a single one of them. If you have any ideas, please leave a comment down below.

JCPenney itself is unfortunately fairly bland, though I enjoy the blank (but technically mostly correct) directory. 

That is unfortunately where our journey ends, as I didn't feel brave enough to go back and dip under the ropes to photograph the former Macy's. As briefly mentioned above, the mall's new owners began demolishing the mall in February 2025 for a mixed use development consisting of retail, restaurants, and apartments, and as of August 2025, the site is little more than a mess of fenced off dirt and gravel.

For some on the ground photography of the demolition and more information on the redevelopment, I'll point you towards Sarasota's local papers, the Herald-Tribune and The Observer.

While I'll probably keep an eye on the site to see what becomes of the now shuttered AMC, my interest has largely ended, as while a better land use than a dead mall, these modern mixed use developments are always pretty uninspiring architecturally, and even from an urbanism perspective are still suburban at their core.

Until next time!