SouthPark is an upscale shopping mall in the affluent SouthPark neighborhood in Charlotte, North Carolina. The mall is located approximately five miles (8 km) south of Uptown Charlotte, at the corner of Sharon and Fairview Roads. With , It is one of the most profitable malls in the country with sales at over $700 per square foot. It is the 10th largest on the East Coast and is the 28th largest in the United States. SouthPark is the most congested shopping area in the United States during Black Friday weekend. The mall is visited by more than 12 million visitors a year. SouthPark Mall is also the home of the SouthPark Community Transit Center, which opened in 2004, which serves the CATS bus lines 19, 29, 30, and 57. The Transit Center is located between Belk and Dillard's. History SouthPark opened on February 12, 1970, with anchor stores Belk, Ivey's, and Sears. The area where SouthPark is today was considered to be on the outskirts of Charlotte at the time it opened. Many people were skeptical about a big shopping mall in the middle of pastureland. The mall was developed by the Belk and Ivey families, owners of the eponymous department stores, who jointly owned and operated the mall, and included a Sears store as a complement due to its focus on housewares. The mall had approximately when it opened, and the design of the shopping mall was starkly modernist, with an underground parking deck, a signature white brick facade, and tinted windows. The inspiration for the mall's original architecture reportedly was Dallas' NorthPark Center. A strip mall opened behind Sears in June 1970 with a Colonial Stores grocery store (later a Big Star food market, then acquired by Harris Teeter in the 1980s) and the SouthPark Cinemas I & II. The mall did not face any real competition until the two-story Eastland Mall was built about northeast. Eastland had the same anchor lineup as SouthPark, but also included a JCPenney store and an ice skating rink giving that mall a competitive advantage. On December 6, 2007 at approximately 12:15 PM EST, a portion of the Nordstrom/Neiman Marcus parking deck collapsed. The collapse of the deck was caused by a car colliding with a retaining wall on the third and highest level. Eyewitness accounts stated an elderly woman may have suffered a heart attack, which triggered the accident; the woman