SHERMAN, TX. - For more than a decade, the Sher-Den Mall served as a major attraction, retail hub and anchor for development along Texoma Parkway. While its days as a shopping mall have long passed, the site may soon be the site for both retail and residential redevelopment.
A proposed multi-family complex will sit on about 31 acres of land on the east side bordering Frisco. The remaining frontage along Texoma, aside from an entrance boulevard, has been reserved and split off into nine lots for retail use.
This week, the Sherman Planning and Zoning Commission approved site plans for a new apartment complex on a portion of the former mall site, setting the stage for its redevelopment and revitalization after decades of disuse.
"The old Sher-Den Mall site has been a major hole in the Texoma Parkway commercial district for decades," Sherman Community and Support Services Manager Nate Strauch said in 2021. "We’ve had a variety of different developers and investors propose different uses for the site over the years, but unfortunately none of those projects has come to fruition.
"The fact that we’re finally seeing some movement toward redevelopment is a great sign for the city of Sherman and the rest of Grayson County as well. A mixed-use approach to bringing commercial and residential may be the solution to one of our area’s largest empty properties."
Site plans for the project show 26 multi-family buildings within the development with an additional building set aside as an amenity. It remained unclear during the meeting how many individual dwellings would be included within the development.
The project is expected to be built in two phases with development on the section along U.S. Hwy. 82 expected to be built first. This first phase would represent about 60 percent of the project, representatives said.
The first phase would include three entrances and exits. The site will be accessible along Texoma and Frisco in addition to cross access through a neighboring lot. P&Z approved the redevelopment of this lot earlier this year as a new QuikTrip location. The second phase would add two more access points.
The move to develop a portion of the site comes almost one year after developers replatted the site into 10 lots for redevelopment and the one of the first clear views of what the site could look like in the future.
The former mall site sits between Texoma Parkway and Frisco Road, and U.S. Highway 82 and Gallagher Drive.
"We are hoping that this might kick start some of the retail redevelopment along that frontage as well," David Bondm representing Spiars Engineering, said Tuesday.
In it's heyday, the mall boasted about 500,000 square feet of of mall and retail space and was lauded as the only enclosed shopping center between Dallas and Oklahoma City. Development of the mall started in 1968 and opened its doors two years later with 42 stores.
The mall began to decline in the mid 1980s as other competitors, namely Midway Mall just down the road, began to spring up. The final tenant of the once Sher-Den Mall closed its doors in 1999.
About five years later, the mall was demolished and the site has remained mostly empty over the past 18 years aside from the trees and other plant life that have since reclaimed it.
Over the years, developers proposed multiple possible uses for the site, including as a potential jail site, but none of these projects were ever realized.
City development officials appears to voice approval for the project during Tuesday's meeting, citing the length of time that the site has remained vacant.
"We do feel like it is probably a good use of the land because it has been vacant for decades, not years," Development Services Director Rob Rae said.
Michael Hutchins | Herald Democrat | Photo by Michael Hutchins
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