Built by Cadillac Fairview, a Canadian developer, the, four-level mall is located on two large city blocks of former urban renewal land. It opened in August 1980 and was the first of three Gallerias to open in the fall of 1980 around the nation, the others being Sherman Oaks and Fort Lauderdale. Its anchor stores are Macy's and Sears, which were relocated to the mall from nearby locations on Main Street to replace the original anchor stores. Abraham & Straus occupied the east anchor spot until converting to Sterns in 1995 and being replaced by Macy's a year later. The west anchor JCPenney closed on April 28, 2001, and was left vacant until September 2003 when Sears moved in. Martin Luther King Blvd. runs directly underneath the mall. The mall was constructed adjacent to a large two-block-long parking garage that is connected directly to the mall at various levels. Shopping floors were color coded blue, green, yellow, and red representing Street Level, Garden Level, location of the Garden food court, and Fashion Level 1 and 2 respectively. During the holiday season, the mall's slogan was "We bring more good things to Christmas." The mall was renovated in the early 1990s; only the glass elevator remains relatively unchanged. For example, the waterfall and stage in the center court was replaced with two miniature fountains situated between the escalators. Similar to a sister project in nearby Stamford, Connecticut, the Galleria's architectural character appears fortress-like and overwhelms even the recent high-density urban quality of its downtown environment. Considering the general architectural design of most enclosed shopping malls, it does not have much opportunity to create an interactive streetscape along its surrounding sidewalk areas. A late 1990s enhancement tried to correct some of these physical flaws, but recent retail tenant fit-outs on the sidewalk level have closed off much of this design effort. In recent years, the mall has experienced competition from the development of nearby, and more upscale, retail developments such as The Westchester mall and The Source at White Plains. A late 1990s promotional advertisement featured the tag line "Shopping for the real world," a subtle jab at the more upscale and affluent clientele and stores at The Westchester roughly a half-mile away. On September 18, 2006, Philip Grant, a homeless convicted rapist was convicted of murder as a hate crime for stabbing Concetta Russo-Carriero to death in a Galleria parking garage on June 29, 2005, because, according to Grant's videotaped confession, she was white with blond hair and blue eyes. Public outrage over the killing prompted local officials to shut down an area shelter from which homeless men, including dangerous sex offenders, were bused downtown each morning, where many reportedly congregated near the Galleria parking garage. On January 5, 2009, a man fell two stories from the third level to the food court level in a suspected suicide attemptat the mall.Interior shots of the mall were used in the 2018 film ’’Eighth Grade’’.
