Northcross Mall was once a haven for Austin’s youth. Now it lives on only in memories.
AUSTIN, Texas — Ask any long-time Austinite, and they can probably tell you about a beloved business you can’t go to anymore. The city’s constant changes have closed the doors on many restaurants and stores.
But one spot was a home to both – and a haven for the city’s youth – for decades.
Northcross Mall on West Anderson Lane opened in 1975 and was demolished in the mid-2000s. Recently featured in a docuseries about the 1991 “Yogurt Shop Murders,” which happened a few blocks away, the mall was once a hotspot for kids and teens growing up in the Capital City.
Now a Walmart and its parking lot take up most of the same space.
Northcross Mall lives on in Austinites’ memories
A Reddit thread created a few years ago served as a place for Austinites to swap stories about the mall.
“My family would have birthday parties in the food court, go ice skating, play at tilt, wander the mall, ride the train. Takes me back,” one commenter said. “I also really miss Cozzoli’s [Pizza] with the crumbled, if you will, hamburger they’d put on their pizza.”
Another commenter also lamented the lost of the pizzeria.
“Got a pizza the size of me for my bday from Cozzoli’s one year, highlight of childhood…watched ‘Titanic’ at the movie theater like 5 times when it came out…got my ears pierced at Claire’s,” they said, later adding, “Good ‘ol Northcross.”
A Facebook post made last year shared photos of the mall in its heyday and was met with more than 100 memories from former mallrats – from time spent at Oshman’s sporting goods store to midnight screenings of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and “The Song Remains the Same.”
‘Mall Man’
In 2007, shortly before Northcross Mall’s demolition, a man named Doug Tash revisited the mall to pay his final respects to a childhood hangout. The visit became a short documentary called “Mall Man,” uploaded to YouTube in 2020.
“When I first started going to the mall, I was so young. It was the ’70s,” Doug Tash says at the beginning of the documentary. “I really loved the mall back when I was a kid. It was the only place I could go to get away from my parents.”
“It was a whole scene. It was where the youth of Austin would all go and congregate, at that mall,” Louis Tash, Doug Tash’s brother, says later, standing in front of a sign that reads, “No Wal-Mart! Develop it neighborly. Develop it right.”
Shortly after, Doug Tash stands in the middle of the mall’s dried-out fountain.
“This is the first time I’ve ever stood here. I guess it’ll be the last,” he says. “I guess this is where Walmart’s tool section will be.”
But before the documentary’s end, he also gets wistful, seeming to recognize that sometimes, places are better in memories.
Sitting outside a shuttered Beall’s, Doug Tash proclaims, “I guess the best thing about this place was … my youth.”
What’s in Northcross Mall Plaza now?
In 2009, KVUE reported that the mall had been divided in half, with Chaparral Ice and the Norris Conference Center settled into a renovated east side and the Walmart planned for the other side. By 2011, the Walmart had opened.
Today, both Chaparral Ice and the Norris Conference Center still stand behind the Walmart. The shopping center also includes an Anytime Fitness, Guitar Center and a handful of restaurants like Louisiana Crab Shack, PhởNatic and IchiUmi Sushi & Ramen.
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