The east side had a living room, and it had an ice rink in the middle of it
If you grew up anywhere off Central Avenue, you did not "go to the mall." You went to Eastland. And the thing nobody outside Charlotte ever believed was the part that made it ours: there was a full ice rink sitting right in the middle of a shopping mall, down past the food court, glowing under the lights while you ate a slice and watched strangers fall down.
Biggest thing in the state, on the east side of town
Eastland opened July 30, 1975 out on Central Avenue, and on day one it was the largest mall in North Carolina. Alfred Kloke designed the place and gave it that abstract rising-sun logo, the little sun with the puffed-out cheeks that anybody who was there can still picture. Belk, Ivey's, and Penney's anchored it, Sears came a few years later, and the whole east side suddenly had one air-conditioned roof to live under.
The rink, the food court, and a whole Saturday
Two things made Eastland more than a place to buy jeans. First was the food court, which the mall bragged was the first in-mall food court on the East Coast, back when that was a genuinely new idea. Second was the rink. It started life as the Ice Capades Chalet and later went by the Ice House, and it was gloriously strange: a little smaller than a real rink, warmer than it should have been, with low ceilings in spots because the food court was built in right over top of it. You could lean on the rail up above and watch the whole thing, skate sounds and pucks fighting with the Muzak piped down from the tables. Birthday parties, first dates, kids who got dropped off for the entire day, and by the end a serious hockey crowd who came in through the loading dock so they did not have to haul gear across the mall.
The stuff regulars still argue about
Ask ten people about the rink and you get ten versions. People up in the food court used to chuck french fries and pocket change down onto the ice, and at least one skater took a thrown penny to the head and lived to write about it. There is a story that runs to this day that the mayor himself laced up skates to cut the ribbon out on the ice when the place opened. And nobody can agree on the exact year the rink finally went dark, which feels about right for a place everybody swears they practically lived at.
How it ended, and what stands there now
The 2000s came for Eastland the way they came for a lot of the east side. The crowds thinned, the anchors closed one by one, and the rink floor got turned into an indoor soccer field before the whole thing went quiet. Eastland Mall closed for good on June 30, 2010. The city bought the roughly 80 acres and the bulldozers showed up in October 2013. For years it was just grass and a fence and a lot of people driving past a field where their childhood used to be.
It is finally becoming something again. The site is being built out as Eastland Yards, and its centerpiece, Eastland Park, is due to open around 2027. Here is the part that will get you: the park's splash pad is going to carry Kloke's rising-sun logo. The mall is gone, but its face is coming back, stamped on the ground where the rink used to be.
For everybody who took the last skate
Nobody got a proper goodbye. There was no last song and no lights up. So we made one. If you ever circled that rink under the food court lights, this one is for you.