Southland Center was designed by Victor Gruen Associates and Louis G. Redstone Associates, and the newly formed Dayton-Hudson Corporation developed the mall. When opened in 1970, Southland Mall was originally anchored by a three-level; Hudson'sat the center of the mall and junior-anchored by a Woolworth'sdime store off the center court and a Kroger supermarket on the eastern side. A two-screen movie theater, located off the west court, opened just weeks after the rest of the mall. Kroger built a larger facility across Eureka Road in the mid-1970s, with the former store gutted and divided into several smaller stores, attached to a new wing ending in a new two-level; JCPenney store in 1976. In 1986, the theater, by then a four-screen venue, was purchased by AMC Theatres. Then in 1988, a small addition was built onto the western side, including a Mervyns store. Also in 1988, The Rouse Company acquired the mall from its previous owners. A food court called Picnic In The Garden opened around 1992-93 as part of an addition to the southern side and featured a large triangular-shaped skylight. AMC's four-screen theater closed in January 1999 and was replaced with a Borders Books & Music a year later. Hudson's was renamed Marshall Field'sin 2001 and Macy's in 2006. Also in 2006, Mervyns exited Michigan and vacated its anchor in the mall and the food court, which had lost all of its tenants in late 2005, was demolished and rebuilt into a Best Buy store. Later, in 2011, the Borders store shut down when that chain became defunct. Rouse Properties was spun off from General Growth Properties in January 2012. The company then added several new tenants; including rue21, Torrid and Taco Bell, to Southland Center, in addition, several existing tenants also renovated their stores. Forever 21 moved from an existing store in the mall to the former Borders space in spring 2013. Then, later in 2013, several smaller store spaces near JCPenney were demolished and replaced by a new Shoe Carnival store. On July 2, 2014, Rouse Properties announced that the vacant-for-eight-years Mervyn's space would be replaced by a 12-screen, all-digital, Cinemark multiplex theater, accompanied by several outdoor sit-down restaurants, including the first Grimaldi's Pizzeria in Michigan. This announcement came just one day after an announcement by MJR Theatres that they would be reopening the former AMC Star Taylor 10 multiplex theater across Eureka Road by the 2014 Christmas season, however, that plan never materialized and that building remains abandoned. In addition, in the late summer of 2014, a complete renovation of the mall began. This project added new flooring and lighting, removed the fountain and replaced it with seating and electronic-device chargers and added several more tenants including Pink, Francesca's and Zumiez. This project was completed in the summer of 2015. Ulta opened a location in the mall along the corridor between Macy's and Best Buy on August 29, 2014. H&M opened on October 1, 2015, requiring the demolition of a total of ten smaller storefronts stretching from the west court into the Cinemark wing, necessitating the relocation of the Taco Bell restaurant across the corridor. As of September 2018, a portion of the third floor of the Macy's store is now a Macy's Backstage outlet store.
