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Sunday, April 10, 2005
Winrock, Coronado Attracted Shoppers From Across N.M. in '60s
By Charlotte Balcomb Lane
Journal Staff Writer
In 1959, when Winrock was a $10 million gleam in developer Winthrop Rockefeller's eye, he hailed the project as New Mexico's first "regional mall."
And though few realized it at the time, the 1961 opening of Winrock signaled the move toward the suburbs and away from Downtown, Albuquerque's historical commercial hub since the arrival of the railroad.
Winrock Center, Rockefeller's namesake mall, was built on 65 acres of undeveloped land leased from the University of New Mexico. It was conceived as a miniature city.
The first phase of the mall offered a "fashion side," with department stores and other retailers, and a "practical side" with a grocery store and restaurants. Later expansions would add a 120-room hotel, apartments, a medical plaza and a movie theater.
In homage to America's growing car culture, Winrock also featured acres of parking and the ability to handle "20,000 vehicular movements" a day, a large amount of traffic in those days.
Winrock's proximity to I-40, then called the Coronado Freeway, made the mall a magnet for shoppers traveling across the state.
In 1965, the magnet effect doubled when Coronado Shopping Center opened essentially across the street. "Uptown" was born.
Coronado was built by Homart Development of Dallas, a subsidiary of Sears, Roebuck and Co. It offered Sears and Rhodes department stores and 30 independent stores.
By 1968, the founder of American Furniture, E. Mannie Blaugrund, understood shopping had fundamentally changed and that Downtown was no longer the center of Albuquerque. Blaugrund had founded his furniture store in Downtown in 1936 and built it up to become a regional powerhouse. But Blaugrund wanted to be located closer to what he believed was becoming the geographic center of Albuquerque— near the malls. He built his flagship three-story outlet at Menaul and Carlisle with enough parking for 500 cars.
"He had a sense the shopping patterns were migrating," said his son, Lee Blaugrund, who has run the business since his father retired in 1984.
In the meantime, both malls expanded, adding stores and services— Winrock in 1984 and 1992 and Coronado in 1973 and 1992.
On Coronado's busiest day in 2004, more than 98,000 people shopped the mall, filling almost all of the available 5,489 parking spaces.
In the next year, both malls plan to renovate yet again to become open-air "lifestyle" centers that mimic the pedestrian-friendly vitality of Albuquerque's old Downtown.
By the late 1990s, the geography of Albuquerque had shifted again, this time to the west. In 1996, Simon Property Group opened the enclosed Cottonwood Mall, which sparked a West Side big-box building frenzy that continues today.
And ABQ Uptown, a third Uptown mixed-use residential and retail center, is also on the drawing board, promising to bring 21st-century shopping to Albuquerque.
Did You Know?
Former UNM President Tom Popejoy became friends with financier Winthrop Rockefeller and convinced him to lease unused "garden" land in the Northeast Heights from the university to build Winrock Center. Rockefeller was one of five Rockefeller brothers who also developed Rockefeller Center in New York and Williamsburg in Virginia.