Fire Erupts at Abandoned TX Mall

Feb. 7, 2017
Arlington firefighters battled the fire for over an hour at the abandoned Six Flags Mall.

A fire erupted Monday morning at the abandoned Six Flags Mall, which was being demolished, a fire official said.

No injuries were reported in the blaze, which was reported at 7 a.m.

The crew at the scene were all out of the building, fire Lt. David Tyler said in a telephone interview.

The blaze began in the ceiling area over the mall’s food court, Tyler said.

“The fire traveled through the ceiling, burning roofing material,” Tyler said. “Crews just tore down the ceiling to stop the fire.”

Firefighters battled the fire for more than an hour before it was extinguished.

The cause was under investigation.

The movie theater on the north end of the mall was not damaged, Tyler said.

The mall opened in 1970 as the first enclosed shopping center in Arlington. In December 2012, Fort Worth businessman G.L. Buck Harris, who once operated a large antique mall in west Fort Worth, bought the 364,000-square-foot center portion of the mall, which had been renamed Plaza Central. He reopened it — briefly — as a Hispanic-themed shopping center in July 2014.

Plans call for the mall to be replaced with a nearly 1.4-million-square-foot industrial complex that would employ roughly 2,000 people, according to officials and tentative plans from a developer buying up the last pieces of the property.

Missouri-based Northpoint Development has purchased most of the 83-acre mall site, northeast of Texas 360 and East Division Street, but has at least one remaining snag — a lawsuit filed by Cinemark USA accusing Northpoint of trying to run its Tinseltown theater out of business before its lease is up.

The Cinemark Tinseltown 9, a single-level theater with 2,442 seats, opened in Six Flags Mall in 1996 and is surrounded by the rubble remains of other buildings.

This report contains information from Star-Telegram archives.

Domingo Ramirez Jr.: 817-390-7763, @mingoramirezjr

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©2017 the Fort Worth Star-Telegram

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