Why America's Most Dangerous Dead Mall Fell Apart: Valley View Mall, Texas

On March 16, 2023, part of the burning shell of Valley View Center in North Dallas collapsed and trapped firefighters, and by that afternoon the city had excavators tearing the building down. The year before, Dallas police had been called to the old mall 56 times, and the police chief had just moved to label it a habitual criminal property. Three years later, the Dallas Mavericks want to build their next arena on the same land. This video traces the full history of Valley View Center, from the Sears store that opened on its own on Preston Road in 1965 to the mall Homart built around it in August 1973, with Sanger-Harris, Dillard’s and Bloomingdale’s as anchors. It covers the competition from Prestonwood Town Center and the Galleria, the Bloomingdale’s closing in 1990, the Macerich years, the anchor closings of 2008, and the 2012 sale for 33.5 million dollars to Beck Ventures and its Dallas Midtown plan. It follows the decade of lawsuits, lost tax incentives and split ownership that came after, the AMC theater that kept part of the mall standing until January 2022, and the three fires of 2023.