FOUNTAIN SQUARE MALL: NASHVILLE, TN
Anonymous's Commentary
Posted November 17, 2008 (user submitted)
Fountain Square opened in the late 1980's to much fanfare. There was a huge (for the time) AMC 14-theater megaplex and a Hollywood-style "walk of fame" - of sorts.
One of the first celebrities to put her hand prints in the pavement was Dolly Parton. When asked why she didn't memorialize some more famous attributes in the cement, she replied that kids might fall in & hurt themselves.
The whole place had that late 80's Miami Vice look to it. If you go to Google Maps and look around Metro Center drive, you can still see the turquoise-blue roofs.
Sometime in the early 90's, Fountain Square made the news a few times when movie patrons would excitedly express their enthusiasm by shooting guns - yes, guns - into the movie screen. Conveniently, other more suburban malls were building up capacity and opening bigger theaters.
Fountain Square disintegrated as a mall, and is now home to a school & some offices.
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Gary Clouse's Commentary:
User submitted Apr 2006Fountain Square was an unconventional retail complex just north of downtown Nashville on the clarksvill highway. It was situated on an artificial lake that had been formed to drain the marshy land. The general area was the site of a large office park, and the developers speculated that many of the nearby office workers would visit during lunch break. Fountain square had a carnival atmosphere, with paddleboat rentals, a lightshow, upscale stores, restaurants, nightclubs and outdoor summer concerts by local artists. There was also a 14 screen cineplex. By 1989, most of the store were empty. One of the restaurants and the cineplex remained open for another year or so. IN late 1989, the developers filed for bankruptcy and the $20 million development was sold for for $500,000. The new owner has managed to lease some of the space for offices. After the mall died, the overflow parking lot just southeast of the main mall parking lot became and atractive nusance for prostitutes and drug dealers to do business. The owners had the pavement plowed up, but left the parking lot light poles in place. The criminal activities moved to the parking lot at the cineplex, eventually causing it to lose business and forcing it to close.