Glenview Galleria

The Glenview Galleria is a declining mall in the north of Glenview.

History

The Glenview Galleria was proposed by the Rottweil Brothers, in 1969 and approved in 1971, The mall would replace an empty peice of land in north Glenview on the famous Ashfield Avenue. Ground was broken for the mall in February 1978 and most of the mall's stores opened in July 1979. The mall had a foodcourt, a large parking garage and 2 department stores, CJNickels and Shears. The only competitor nearby was the Western Winds Mall in Ashfield, which was hard to reach by car, so shoppers preffered the Glenview Galleria.

in the 1990s a subway entrance was built on the mall property,

Decline

The mall started its decline in the late 1980s when the Downtown Greenfield Mall had re-opened after renovations with a second department store, Shears.

In 1985 the Delfino Plaza mall opened in the nearby Del Rey.

Unfortunately the Shears department store in the Glenview Galleria had closed down due to it moving to downtown, this meant that the mall only had one department store left and it became less busy as people preffered the Downtown Mall and Delfino Plaza malls nearby.

When the 1994 Earthquake struck Glenview a huge fire started in the foodcourt which could not be put out before 4 of the restaurants burned down. Looting was a huge issue in the hours that followed the earthquake, as no police could reach the mall. An old women crashed her 1990 Corvega Blitz into the main entrance doors, letting everyone inside. Two people were shot during the looting and one died of smoke inhalation as they were hiding near the burning food court.

After 9 hours of chaos police and other emergency services finally arrived, putting out the food court fire and helping the wounded. The Foodcourt was rebuilt but a bitter taste was left in the population of Glenview.

Fortunately the mall struck a deal with the 5Theatre group and the former Shears Department store was partly rebuilt into the Glenview 5 Theatre in 2003.

In 2019 The Downtown Mall doubled in size after being bought by the Westlake Corporation. The CJNickels in the Galleria closed down and moved to the new expansion, leaving the Galleria with no large anchor. After this many stores started closing down and the mall became a center of crime.

In 2024 A new plan was made to rebuild the mall into a large luxury apartment development and many of the stores still there would be forced to close at the end of the year.

Future

The plan

The mall owners, Glenview Galleria Holding Coorporation have come together with the Salvatore Realty Group to make a plan to rebuild the Glenview Galleria into a large housing development. The recent housing crisis and change in zoning codes eventually caused these two companies to work together to make the plan.

Most of the structure of the mall will be taken down as two large 15 story towers will be put in place, these will house many luxury apartments and a few affordable housing units as forced by the states zoning code. The parking garage and theatre will be replaced by a 6 story apartment building and will house a new location for the theatre and a parking garage for the subway station.

Controversy

The plan was released in April, and since then Glenview residents have come together and protested at the Santa Cabeza Library about the developments pushing out locals and removing the culture from Glenview.the residents of Glenview are protesting against the mall redevelopment plan with the phraise: Glenview<3Galleria. To hopefully stop the apartments from being built

For now the plan is still ongoing and construction will start in January