It was the late 1980s, and from her seat at the Things Remembered kiosk, Karen Dufour could see much of her world spinning at the North Shore Square shopping center in Slidell.

North Shore Square, the only shopping center in St. Tammany Parish, played an outsized role in the lives of countless teenagers who roamed the food court, arcade and aisles in faded jeans and oversized shirts. Dufour included.

The Slidell High School student could look up from her monogramming machine and catch the attention of friends who worked at nearby stores. Other friends would stop by to slice something. Later, there might be dinner at Chick-fil-A.

“Everyone you knew was there,” Dufour, 51, said recently. “We all grew up in that mall. I even learned to drive in that big parking lot.”

Dufour now lives in Mid-City, but North Shore Square is still close to her heart. And like many others, she often wonders what will become of the once bustling shopping district, which now has few stores.

“It would be really nice if something happened there,” said Dufour.

Caught in the same shopping spiral as countless other malls across the country, only three stores still lure customers into North Shore Square’s massive parking lots: At Home, the popular Dillard’s Clearance Center, and Conn’s HomePlus, a nationwide chain that filed for bankruptcy in July and plans to close its stores in Louisiana and 170 others in the southern United States.

North Shore Square also faced competition from Fremaux Town Center, an open-air shopping center that opened in 2014 and lured shoppers to another part of the city.

The mall’s interior has been closed since 2019, when owner Morguard, a Canadian company that owns or manages more than $17 billion worth of real estate across North America, announced it would instead focus on leasing the anchor stores on busy Northshore Boulevard.

But these efforts have been rather fruitless, as evidenced by the impending closure of the Conn’s HomePlus store.

North Shore Square is no exception. Across the city, malls that once fueled retail have closed or are being remodeled to become relevant again.

While Lakeside Shopping Center in Metairie continues to be an economic driver as a shopping center, the Esplanade in Kenner is closed and once again up for sale after a redevelopment plan for a mixed-use property that included hundreds of apartments stalled.

The former Clearview Mall has become Clearview City Center, a mixed-use development that includes a $115 million Ochsner “super clinic” built on the old Sears site and a $55 million luxury apartment complex currently under construction.

But other old shopping centers like the Belle Promenade in Marrero and the Lake Forest Plaza in eastern New Orleans have long since disappeared.

Renovating old shopping centers is not an easy task.

“It’s extremely expensive,” said Robert Hand, a broker with Louisiana Commercial Realty.

And if a property is left vacant for a long period of time, the value of the property will decrease, he said.

“Vacancy creates problems,” Hand said. “Vacant buildings – you can’t just flip a switch and get them running again.”

Slidell officials have been working with St. Tammany Parish’s economic development agency, the St. Tammany Corp., and Morguard to push forward a redevelopment of North Shore Square, which sits on a highly visible parcel of land at Interstate 12 and Northshore Boulevard.

“Redeveloping this mall has been a priority for some time,” said Chris Masingill, CEO of St. Tammany Corp. “We have had several discussions with potential clients nationally, but none have come to fruition to date.”

Slidell Mayor Greg Cromer said he has shown the property “at least a dozen times in the six years I’ve been mayor.”

The ideas for possible uses are varied, said Cromer.

“Movie set, office space, some kind of health center. Anything. A Slidell City Council member even floated the idea of ​​a bond issue to buy it” and then hired the St. Tammany Corp. to market it, he said.

Cromer said the special tax district the city council set up around the mall to raise money for improvements had been dissolved but could be re-established “if the right tenant can be found.”

This “right tenant” remains difficult to find, say Cromer and others.

Something that will probably never be again?

“Nobody ever talks about it becoming a mall again,” Cromer said.

In 2017, a Morguard representative said the company was exploring options to transform the mall into an outdoor shopping and living area.

In response to recent questions about any prospects or plans for North Shore Square, Morguard issued a statement.

“We are currently in the planning phase for the future of the mall. Our focus is on finding the right tenants for the available space on the property,” said Associate Vice President Joshua Nolan in a statement.

Opened in 1985, the 600,000-square-foot Slidell Mall quickly became an economic engine, attracting shoppers—and those aforementioned teenagers—from across the region and generating sales tax revenue.

“There were so many great stores there,” Dufour said. “The Gap, of course. And Nine West. The Limited – that was another great store for girls.”

At one point it also had five major stores, including Sears, Mervyns and Dillards, as well as a six-screen movie theater.

“I remember it was always crowded and really festive,” said Mandy Athey, who also worked at the Things Remembered kiosk and now lives in Arizona. “And you met all kinds of people you knew when you went there.”

Masingill said he was confident something would be done, but when that might happen remained pure speculation.

“I think everything is on the table,” he said. “It’s a long game.”