Westfield Old Orchard in Skokie celebrates 70 years as North Shore landmark
It was the morning of Monday, Oct. 22, 1956, when the doors of a new Marshall Field & Company, the crown jewel among Chicago’s retail royalty, opened for the first time in Skokie.
The gleaming three-story, 310,000-square-foot department store would serve as the anchor tenant to what would soon become the metropolis of postwar suburban shopping in Chicago’s North Shore: Old Orchard Shopping Center.
According to Stephanie Guthrie, a coordinator at the Skokie Heritage Museum, swarms of people arrived that opening day, having been promised by local news outlets the mall would be unlike anything they’d seen before.
With the opening of discount retailer The Fair the following month (later to be purchased by Montgomery Ward & Co. and converted under its label in 1964) and Saks Fifth Avenue in 1958, Old Orchard provided many suburbanites and new-to-town GI Bill families with what they seemingly wanted most — consumerism on a new scale.
Marshall Field’s famous maxim, “Give the lady what she wants,” would serve as Old Orchard’s “unofficial ethos in the coming decades,” Guthrie added, as the retail oasis continued to adapt to the ever changing times of consumer trends.
Nearly 70 years later, Old Orchard is somehow continuing to remain relevant, even as e-commerce juggernauts like Amazon wipe out local storefronts and malls across the county take their final breath.
Today, Old Orchard, now referred to as “Westfield Old Orchard,” following the mall’s acquisition by commercial real estate company Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield (URW) in 2002, is a thriving mecca of more than a hundred high-end and mass-market retailers, restaurants and specialty shops.
For the nearly 10 million visitors who stroll its manicured outdoor corridors each year, Old Orchard has maintained its pursuit to be far more than simply a retail destination, according to General Manager Maegen Akers.
“Westfield Old Orchard has succeeded for 70 years because it’s never been just a shopping center,” Akers told Pioneer Press.
“It has been where the North Shore comes together. My hope is that 70 years from now, people will still be making memories here, just as generations of families have done since 1956.”
Part of what has kept Old Orchard alive while surrounding Chicago-area malls like Ford City and Northbrook Court suffer in the wake of revenue declines has been its ability to recognize what consumers want and adapt, without losing its identity entirely.
Chicago-based developer Phillip Klutznick formerly told the Chicago Tribune he turned the once sprawling apple orchard into an open-air commercial shopping center because outdoor malls were the emerging model at the time and it was what the public wanted.
The mall has never abandoned its open concept design precisely because of that same instinct: give the people what they want, Guthrie said.
While Marshall Field’s, now Macy’s, continues to serve as an anchor for Old Orchard shoppers, other department stores like Montgomery Ward, Lord & Taylor and Bloomingdale’s have since closed their stores as popular retailers like Nordstrom, Zara and Pottery Barn take their place.
“The Lord and Taylor development is a perfect example of a department store that no longer had a place in this shopping center,” Akers said.
After the high-end retailer closed its doors in 2018, officials were able to “reconfigure the space” to bring in four additional tenants (Zara, Arhaus, Pottery Barn and Puttshack, an LED-lit mini golf course and restaurant), all of whom help to bring in more revenue and annual foot traffic, she said.
“And then we’ve done the same with Bloomingdale’s,” Akers added, which now operates the downsized Bloomie’s store while a more than $100 million redevelopment project to add hundreds of mixed-use residential units is slated to take shape in the place of the former Bloomingdale’s three-story flagship building.
Akers said the first phase of the project will begin early 2027 and will add 400 initial rental units directly onto the shopping center’s northwest corner.
Phase one will likely take two years to complete, she added, with phase two adding more residential units and a hotel.
Over the last year, Old Orchard generated about $11.45 million in sales tax revenue for Skokie, according to village spokesperson Patrick Deignan.
Per Akers, year-to-date foot traffic has grown by about 5%, with popular retailers like Pop Mart, Boll & Branch and Blue Bottle Coffee joining the 10 additional brands opening up storefronts.
Few surrounding suburban shopping destinations can compete with Old Orchard’s sustained profitability. Akers said she expects the mall will further expand in the months — and years — to come.
“Hearing the stories that people have, the memories, the family traditions [of] growing up at this mall, I really see that as something we’re going to continue for the next 70 years.”