Foothills Mall, Maryville, TN

An extant asset

There’s a lot to love about the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee. The country roads leading up to the eponymous National Park, Dolly Parton and her theme park nestled in good ole Pigeon Forge, and the big, bright college town of Knoxville located right at the foot of the hills. There, in the suburban villa of Maryville, just a short drive past the McGhee-Tyson airport, is the mall named after those foothills.

 
Foothills Mall Mallmanac, ca. 2000. View the full PDF version here.

Foothills Mall hosted my one and only visit in December of 2000, when I went on an impromptu visit to see a friend who lived in the area. Truth be told, against the gorgeous backdrop of eastern Tennessee, there really wasn’t much to remember about the place. It was small, had one of the few mall locations of Goody’s that I had ever seen and not much else. I was just glad that they had mallmanacs available to commemorate the occasion. As well as adequate… Uh… Entrances and ceilings. Yeah.

 
L- Foothills Mall in 2011. R- Foothills Mall from above. (Source)

Foothills Mall opened in 1983 and remains the only enclosed shopping mall within suburban Blount County. It debuted with JCPenney, Miller’s, Proffitt’s and Sears; pretty standard for that region of the south. When Miller’s left, Proffit’s moved into their walls and occupied two separate spaces. Before long, Belk took over one of the Proffitt’s while the other sat empty until Carmike opened a cinema in its place.

With an addition of Goody’s and TJ Maxx, Foothills seems to be doing fine. I really hope it lasts, as these types of facilities on the extreme outskirts of medium size cities seem to be falling by the wayside. So I hope never to read of a re-formatting along with a renaming involving the words Towne and Centre.

Foothill Mall’s official website