Originally, a small outdoor shopping center was opened by Saul Biskind in 1958 on what was a field of strawberries. The plaza contained a Sears, F. W. Woolworth Company, and a Pick-N-Paygrocery store, along with a small-scale J. C. Penney and other stores. A freestanding May Company Cleveland store was built to the east of the original plaza in 1965. The enclosed mall was opened in 1976 and attached to the east end of the existing May Company building. It featured new, larger J. C. Penney and Sears stores. In 1980, Hexalon Real Estate—an affiliate of what is now Unibail-Rodamco—became an investor in the mall. The 1980s saw the opening of the Plaza South attached to the original strip and the 1987 addition of the award-winning South Court to the mall. Additionally, 2 mid-level hotels and several office facilities, such as Corporate Center and Technology Park, were built proximal to the retail facilities. These served to feed customers into the Mall and Plazas, as did the strategic location near Lorain Road, Brookpark Road, Great Northern Boulevard, and Interstate 480. In 1991, Hexalon bought out the remaining Biskind stake in the mall and undertook a significant upgrade and remodel in 1992. It hired The Edward J. DeBartolo Corporation as its management company until 2000, when Rodamco's Urban Shopping Centers assumed management. The Biskind family, which had retained the Plazas, eventually sold them to DDR Corp. in 1997. May Company Cleveland was renamed Kaufmann's in 1993, and became Macy's in 2006. The Westfield Group acquired the shopping center in early 2002, and renamed it "Westfield Shoppingtown Great Northern." Dillard's was added on March 19, 2003, expanding the South Court into a full-fledged new wing. Westfield dropped "Shoppingtown" from the mall's name in June 2005, around the time that a newly built 84,000 square foot Dick's Sporting Goods opened. The original food court, which had been located between Sears and J. C. Penney, was moved adjacent to Dick's in 2011. In March 2013, construction began at site of the original food court for a 10-screen Regal Entertainment Groupmovie theater, three new restaurants, and extra renovations; this addition was completed by December of that year. The mall was sold to Starwood Retail Partners, a subsidiary of Starwood Capital Group, in the midst of construction. On July 1, 2020, it was announced that Sears would be closing as part of a plan to close 28 stores nationwide. The store will close in September 2020. This is the last Sears store in Ohio.
