Genesee Valley Center

About this mall

Genesee Valley Center boasts almost 1.3 million square feet of shopping with 125+ retailers anchored by Macy’s, JCPenney and Barnes & Noble. One-of-a-kind shops for the market include Francesca’s, Buckle, Play BIG, Rogers & Hollands Jewelers, Bar Louie and Parvizi Menswear. Newly opened stores include Torrid, H&M, Mo Pete’s Sports Bar and Box Lunch. The Outdoor Village at Genesee Valley Center features our newly opened Wahlburgers. It offers 65,000 square feet of boulevard-style shopping and entertainment events including free Concerts every Thursday evening in the summer.

Genesee Valley Center is an enclosed shopping mall located in Flint Township, Michigan, outside the city of Flint, Michigan, United States. Opened in 1970, the mall is 1,272,397 square feet (118,209.5 m2) of leasable area. The mall has four anchor stores: Burlington Coat Factory, JCPenney, Macy’s and Sears. It comprises more than 120 tenants, including a food court, and an external concourse called the Outdoor Village which also features a Barnes & Noble bookstore. The mall is located on Miller Road and Linden Road, near the junction of Interstate 69 and Interstate 75.

Genesee Valley Center was developed in 1970 as a one-level, enclosed shopping mall with a straight-line concourse with an anchor store at either end. Sears, the northern anchor, was the first store to open, doing so in May 1970. Detroit, Michigan-based Hudson’s followed two months later, with this location being the chain’s largest store outside of Detroit. These two stores served as the northern and southern anchor stores to the mall, respectively. On August 8, 1970, Genesee Valley Center opened to the public. At the time, it comprised fifty-six tenants, including a Hamady supermarket and a Cunningham drugstore. By September, a Woolworth dime store had opened next to Sears.

In the mid-1980s, an eastern wing anchored by JCPenney was added to the mall, followed a few years later by a Montgomery Ward store, which was added on a short wing extending southeasternly from JCPenney. The Cunningham drugstore was demolished in 1985 for a western wing anchored by Mervyns, and two years later, a mezzanine featuring a food court was added to the mall’s center court. This addition brought the mall to 1.3 million square feet of gross leasable area, making it the largest mall in Michigan to be located north of Detroit.

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