The First Chapel in a Mall
St. Mary's Chapel — said to be the first church ever built inside an American shopping center.
Since March 16, 1960
65 Years on the
Same Corner.
South Florida's first open-air shopping center — and still the beating heart of Liberty City. This is how the corner of NW 27th Ave & 79th Street became a Miami landmark.
Northside from above — 65 years on the same corner.
Our History
From a $15-million bet in 1959 to the next sixty-five years.
1959
Groundbreaking
Ground breaks on a 45-acre site at NW 27th Avenue and 79th Street: a partnership of Sears Roebuck & Co., aluminum magnate Arthur Vining Davis, and the Allen Morris Company. The price tag — fifteen million dollars.
19591960
Grand Opening
South Florida had never seen a mall you walk through under open sky. Northside was the first. On opening day the developer landed by helicopter — that's how big this corner already was. Thousands came.
1960Apr 1960
The Southeast's Largest Sears
A Sears of 183,900 square feet is dedicated — one of the largest in the Southeast, the second-largest in all of Florida — with its own auto center and garden shop.
Apr 19601960s
A True Town Square
St. Mary's Chapel opens inside the center — reputedly the first church ever built inside an American shopping center. Children play on terrazzo animal sculptures — a frog, a turtle, an alligator — by Miami artist Earl La Pan, beside the '30 Fish on a Fountain' in the north plaza. Woolworth, Kresge's, Walgreen Drug and Lerner Shops draw families from across Dade County.
1960s1968
Lights, Camera
The Northside Theatre opens on January 31, 1968. It becomes the Northside Twin on September 8, 1970 — the neighborhood's movie house.
19681982
A New Chapter
Sears closes in July 1982. The space is reborn as the Freedom Marketplace — the beginning of the beloved flea market that still thrives here today.
19822007
Reinvestment
Acquired by Urban America in 2002, the center gets a roughly five-million-dollar rehabilitation in 2006–2007: new stucco, brick, tile, paint, and roof.
20072010
The IMC Era
IMC Property Management takes ownership in 2010 and becomes IMC Equity Group in 2015 — a Miami operator with a long-term commitment to this corner.
2010Today
Built for the Next 65
Owned and invested in by IMC Equity Group, with new community housing rising right next door — 161 new apartments and plans for roughly 1,000 homes. More neighbors, more life, at the corner that started it all.
Today
Heritage
The Details That Made It a Landmark.
The Terrazzo Animals
A frog, a turtle, and an alligator in colored terrazzo by artist Earl La Pan — where a generation of Miami kids played.
Ideas Copied Citywide
Civic ideas so good the same developer carried them to Dadeland years later. Northside was the blueprint.
Today & Tomorrow
The original — restored, and just getting started.
Under IMC Equity Group, Northside has been renewed corner-to-corner while keeping every ounce of its character. With 161 new apartments rising next door and roughly 1,000 homes planned around it, daily foot traffic is flooding back to the corner that started it all — and the next chapter is already underway.