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The rise and fall of the Port Plaza Mall

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GREEN BAY – The development of the downtown shopping mall began decades before any land was moved for the Port Plaza mall in Green Bay — all of the way back to 1956 and the creation of the Gregby Committee.

Gregby — a contraction of Greater Green Bay — hired a Los Angeles firm to draw a master plan for a shopping center.

After years of trial and error, in February 1967, the council approved three resolutions that would adopt a Gregby redevelopment plan for an area running from the Fox River to Monroe Street, from Cedar Street to a half block south of Main Street.

Then, with 10 years of work behind it, the Gregby committee disbanded and the Redevelopment Authority was created and all of the jurisdiction over the project was given to it.

In February of 1968, HUD authorized $5.5 million to partially finance the project and an initial $1.2 million grant was approved.

On March 10, 1969, the first of 66 buildings on the property met its fate, as the former A and P Supermarket located on the corner of Jefferson and Cedar was torn down.

By May 1972, all land had been purchased and buildings demolished, with the exception of four buildings and six parcels.

After the first contractor fell through, Port Plaza Development Co., out of Whitefish Bay, was selected as the new contractor, and in October 1973, ground was broken on the first retail space.

In September 1975, Port Plaza Development Co. walked away from the project and Chicago-based Port Plaza Mall Co. was appointed to the project.
While construction started, financing for the project fell through and it wasn’t until April of 1976 that financing was secured and the project got the go-ahead, once again.

Finally, on Aug. 10, 1977, after two decades of work, the Port Plaza Mall opened for business, with two anchor stores — JC Penney and H.C. Prange — and nearly 100 tenants.

A 30-foot clock, four-face clock tower from the Winona, Miss., courthouse was disassembled and transported to the mall site at a cost of $15,000, and became the centerpiece of the new mall.

In 1982, the mall expanded to the south, adding a new food court and a third anchor store — the Boston Store.

In March 1986, Metropolitan Life Insurance purchased the mall.

“Metropolitan is starting an aggressive mortgage program, seeking to finance a wide variety of quality projects in excess of $5 million such as shopping centers, high-tech facilities, multi-family housing and leased office buildings,” Metropolitan Vice President of Real Estate William J. Bornhoff, told the Press-Gazette at the time.

In 1988, the mall was home to 119 stores in its 1,000,000 square feet of space and employed 1,710, when it underwent a $3 million renovation, adding fountains to the center court area.

Four years later, H.C. Prange Co. sold its stores to Younkers, Inc.
While the name of the Green Bay store changed, the business remained separate from the mall, as did JC Penney.

In 1997, Zamais Services of Johnstown, Pa., bought Port Plaza from Metropolitan in a package of 10 malls throughout the country.

“It’s a pretty strong asset,” owner Damian Zamias told Thomas Content and Tom Murphy of the Press-Gazette. “What we hope to bring to it is some additional stores to improve the small store makeup. We also want to do some things in terms of amenities and aesthetics.”

The mall was still 85% occupied, but the country was starting to see the indoor mall’s decline, as shopping headed toward the suburbs.

In 2001, the city of Green Bay purchased the mall and sold it to Development Associates, who had plans to revitalize it by turning it into a mixed-used space.

The mall was renamed Washington Commons and the fountain and center court area was turned into a food court.

Renovations were made through city financing that was to be recouped through special assessment.

By that time, just a third of the spaces were leased.

In the fall of 2005, the last two stories — Things Remembered and JC Penney closed.

By March 2006, Development Associates was facing three separate lawsuits.

The property was put up for sale, via an agreement between Development Associates, the mortgage holder Baylake Bank and the city of Green Bay, and the clock tower was returned to Mississippi.

The mall remained vacant and recycling work began on the building in July 2011.

The walls came down in the spring of 2012 to make way for a new Schreiber Foods headquarters.

Port Plaza Mall, Green Bay, Gregby Committee, contraction, Leonhardt, Port Plaza Development Co.

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