Grand Cities Mall

South Forks Land Corporation developed the property originally known as South Forks Plaza, opening in stages beginning February 26, 1964, in Grand Forks, North Dakota, as the state’s first enclosed shopping mall; Kmart opened first, with Sears following on October 8, 1964, though the mall’s two wings remained internally disconnected from each other until 1973. Architect firm DeRemer, Harrie & Kennedy designed the property.

The 1978 opening of Columbia Mall, developed by Dayton Hudson Corporation on the edge of town near the newly completed Interstate 29, quickly drew away the regional and national chain retail that had defined the older property, leaving it to serve a more local, community-oriented tenant base from that point forward; a 2001 big-box strip mall, Grand Forks Marketplace, added further competitive pressure. Kmart, the property’s original 1964 anchor, finally closed in 2019.

HOPE Evangelical Covenant Church had already been using part of the property for worship services for nearly two decades before formally acquiring the entire mall in 2015, rebranding it Midtown District. At roughly 367,122 sqft, the property currently carries nearly 50 stores and services, including Ace Hardware and Poppler’s Music alongside more than 40 locally-owned businesses, a rock-climbing wall, a dance studio and North Dakota’s local Motor Vehicle Department office, plus the church itself.

That church-owned, community-hub redevelopment, a formerly regional mall now blending small local retail with a rock-climbing wall, a government services office and active worship space under a single religious-institution owner, reflects one of the more unusual adaptive-reuse paths available to an aging, regionally-displaced 1960s mall once it could no longer compete for national chain retail against newer, larger properties built elsewhere in the same city.