Winrock Shopping Center

Albuquerque, New Mexico - circa 1960s

Winrock Shopping Center interior in the sixties--before falling on hard retail times in more recent years. This classic, but now-defunct shopping mall's ultimate fate seems to be in limbo these days according to a December 2, 2006 user submitted entry on DeadMalls.com:

"About two years ago stores started closing up in Winrock. It seems the owners had decided to redevelop it as an open sky, town center style mall so they were not allowing tenants to renew their leases. One by one all the stores closed (except for Dillard's who owned their space).

Unfortunately, during this time another developer created a third open air mall across the street. Now the Winrock owners have decided not to redevelop their mall. Winrock now sits empty, rotting in the sun."

Mall history: 1961 - present
Architect: Victor Gruen
Current website: n/a
Current aerial view
Resource articles: 1, 2. 3. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
Previous entries: 1, 2, 3

The Daily Mall Reader: Winrock Center Redevelopment

A daily dose of mall-related reading...

"Winrock's full-circle face lift"
Tired of being called "Windy-Rock," the open-air shopping center got walled-off and air-conditioned in 1975, one of many makeovers since it opened in 1961. But now those walls are coming down.

Albuquerque Tribune Online - August 19, 2002

(Excerpt) Winrock Center has gone through a multitude of phases and changes in its 41 years. Its next big transformation is set to begin soon, with a wrecking ball.

Winrock's owners plan to turn the state's third-largest mall into an open-air, urban-feeling shopping and office complex.

"This is a new trend that, based on consumer demand, we're moving toward," said Shelton Weeks, general manager of the 900,000-square-foot Albuquerque shopping center. "We're moving toward what we would call a new urbanism or what we call a live-work-play environment."

The new "The Avenue-Winrock" will be an open-air center reminiscent of a downtown shopping district. It will have two "avenues" splitting it in three quadrants. At their axis will be a remodeled Dillard's department store.

Read the full article here.