Wonderland mall is still beloved, still a survivor after six decades
When Don Mathis, 70, walks into Wonderland of the Americas, it’s like stepping through the looking glass. A whoosh of the doors, and he’s a kid again in 1962, wandering the shiny new shopping center with his parents and Grandma Alice as they joke that she’s a literal Alice in Wonderland.
As a middle schooler in 1964, Mathis raced slot cars with his older brother on a giant track in the mall’s lower level. As a teenager, he was a dishwasher at the mall’s Piccadilly Cafeteria, a job he ditched in 1969 to catch Led Zeppelin at the Texas International Pop Festival in Dallas.
“It’s just been a part of my life forever and ever,” said Mathis, who visits Wonderland these days for his biannual checkup at one of its three Veterans Affairs clinics or for the occasional food court calzone. “I think it’s just as good as it ever was.”
On Sept. 14, 1961 — 60 years ago today — Wonderland Shopping City opened to fireworks and fanfare on what were then the outskirts of San Antonio. It was once the largest indoor mall in the city. Today, the Balcones Heights fixture is more of a bargain-based community center, a quiet cross section of value shopping, offbeat events and eclectic medical services that include birth doulas, pediatric dentistry and COVID-19 vaccinations.
Yet no matter how much the mall has changed, the mere mention of Wonderland takes Mathis and many other San Antonians
back in time.
“Wonderland, just listening and talking to a lot of people — it’s home away from home,” said Wonderland marketing director Victoria Hernandez. “It’s evolved so much, but it’s still home.”
1960s: Biggest in S.A.
San Antonians of a certain age still remember when Wonderland first lit up a relatively barren Northwest Side around Fredericksburg Road and Loop 410.
Retiree Cheryl Osborn was 8 when her family made the trek from their South Side home to the mall’s opening day. She remembers “standing in the parking lot with fireworks and big search lights.”
At 650,000 square feet, Wonderland opened as the largest shopping center in San Antonio. It even boasted the world’s longest ribbon for an opening ceremony: more than 3,000 feet, tied around the entire two-story mall.
San Antonio’s first Montgomery Ward department store anchored one end. At the other, a Handy Andy supermarket provided covered and curbside grocery loading. (Handy Andy had opened in 1959 and was incorporated into the new mall.)
Part of the mall’s commitment to its Wonderland theme was Alice of Wonderland, a guide in a pinafore dress who directed visitors from a central kiosk to more than three dozen stores, including retailers such as Sommers Drugs, Winn’s, Satel’s suit store and F.W. Woolworth 5 & 10.
John Castillo remembers those stores well. As a child, he used to help his father with his maintenance duties, sometimes sitting on his dad’s floor waxer like a cat on a Roomba to help buff out those stubborn spots. Now Wonderland’s chief of engineering, Castillo has been a full-time part of the mall’s maintenance since 1982.
Castillo recalled going to a mobile petting zoo inside the mall when he was a kid. Other quirky animal promotions during the mall’s first decade included poodle fashion shows and performances by Skipper the dolphin in a giant tank on Wonderland’s fifth anniversary.
Wonderland excelled in both diversions and department store offerings. In 1963, the mall welcomed the Teen Canteen, a hangout for teenagers that took over a lower-level dance studio on weekends. In 1964, Wonderland added a posh Rhodes department store in the space now occupied by Burlington.
’70s to early ’80s: Frost Bros.
Big changes were afoot at Wonderland in the 1970s, and not just with bell bottoms and butterfly collars on the runways of the mall’s fashion shows. Rhodes left in the late ’70s, making way for Frost. Bros.
The mall changed hands in 1977, when original owner Charles Becker sold to affiliates of the Lehndorff Group of West Germany. Wonderland underwent a $6.6 million overhaul of its interior and exterior.
About that time, Wonderland brought back the teen club experience for a new generation. Jenifer Harris used to dance her junior and high school nights away at Image, a dance club on Wonderland’s lower level. Harris said her mother used to go dancing at Wonderland’s Teen Canteen back in the day.
“When I walk into the mall now ... there’s just that feeling of nostalgia,” said Harris, now a sales coordinator for a manufacturer. “Because even though the stores have changed, the pathways are still the same.”
Mid-’80s to early 2000s
In 1986, the Lehndorff Group launched a $28 million renovation that would transform Wonderland into Crossroads of San Antonio. The highlights: a giant outdoor
fountain and amphitheater that beckoned shoppers into the Palm Pavilion, a glassy addition with towering palm trees and bright skylights, and a new food court, six-screen movie theater and Stein Mart anchor store.
The reborn mall officially was unveiled in 1987, and the comedian Gallagher smashed watermelons with his trademark Sledge-omatic from a balcony before a packed amphitheater crowd.
But the revamp and rebranding didn’t revitalize the mall’s fortunes. Frost Bros. filed for bankruptcy in 1988 and closed its Crossroads store the next year.
By 1990, nearly half the mall was vacant.
In the 1990s, Burlington took over the former Frost Bros. spot and Hobby Lobby moved into what was once Handy Andy.
Though the mall’s amphitheater fountains don’t splash like they used to, they have hosted the Balcones Heights Jazz Festival since 1993.
In 1996, the bank that held the loan on the big Crossroads overhaul threatened foreclosure — twice — before taking over the mall. MRO Properties bought Crossroads the next year.
The turn of the century marked the end of another Wonderland era: Montgomery Ward closed in 2001.
Most of the former Montgomery Ward space was torn down to make room for a Super Target in 2003. The remaining lower-level retail space was replaced by the Norris Conference Center in 2004. The upper portion now houses a Burkes Outlet and Wonderland Jump & Play.
2000s to now
The early 2000s brought an infusion of art house style to the floundering mall. The Regal Cinemas Crossroads Theater, which specialized in indie and foreign films, closed in 2002. It opened less than a year later as Santikos’ Bijou at Crossroads, a cafe cinema specializing in art house films.
The Wonderland name returned in 2010, when new owner Crossroads Mall Partners rebranded it Wonderland of the Americas — the name by which most longtime San Antonians referred to the mall.
“So many people were excited when Crossroads went back to Wonderland,” said general manager Denise Bush, who has been with the mall for nearly 30 years. “Even today if I tell somebody I worked at Crossroads, they’re like, ‘Where?’ And I’ll say, ‘Wonderland.’ And they’re like, ‘Oh! I remember that when I was a kid!’”
The mall has original features to jog memories. Rhodes’ glass elevator still runs through the heart of the Burlington retail space, which still leads out to the same covered parking beneath the building that was there in the early ’60s.
“That was the first time I ever rode in a glass elevator,” Mathis said. “This was like ‘The Jetsons’ to my teenage mind. It was futuristic. I’m so glad they’re still running that elevator.”
The slot car track Mathis and others remember from the mall’s first decade now thrills new generations of drivers at Magnatech Slot Car Raceway, which brought the 180-foot course back to Wonderland in 2004.
Magnatech owner Jim Honeycutt inherited the track in the early ’70s, a couple of years after the original Wonderland attraction closed. He likens the eight-lane wonder to the mall itself, a unique piece of history that both defies and exemplifies its age.
“Wonderland has actually got some character, even though it’s not the glorious lady that it used to be in the ’60s,” Honeycutt said. “It’s been around so long ... and the simple fact is, it’s a survivor.”
The return of the Wonderland name didn’t mean a return to the shopping city of old. The mall now is a mixed-use development, with an emphasis on budget- and community-friendly products, services and activities.
Hence, more mom-and-pop stores upstairs such as Adriana’s Casa de Novia’s, which specializes in baptism gowns and quinceañera dresses, and geeky vendors such as Action Figure Exchange, Creepy Classics and CD Sam music, which occupy the mall’s Little Shops at Wonderland.
Wonderland also is one of the largest voting sites in Bexar County. When the mall isn’t hosting voters, it’s hosting quirky conventions and other free events for the public, such as its recent Wonderland UFO Festival and the return of its long-running Monster-con horror convention later this month.
The pivot has paid off. While the so-called “retail apocalypse” has wiped out malls and anchor stores across the country over the past decade, Wonderland has stayed open and even outlasted San Antonio malls that came after it, such as Central Park Mall, which closed in 2001, and Windsor Park Mall, which closed in 2005.
Various medical services at Wonderland cater to all ages and incomes. This year, University Health turned its mall training space into a COVID-19 vaccination site. Marketing director Hernandez said the mall averaged 5,000 to 7,000 inoculations a day at the height of vaccinations. The site closed in July, but University Health is preparing to provide vaccine booster shots there.
The city of Balcones Heights is negotiating a possible $5 million investment in Wonderland that would give the city 15,000 square feet in the mall and an approximately 45 percent ownership stake in the entire property.
Wonderland still sees its highs and lows. In 2016, Career Point College abruptly closed when the Education Department cut its access to federal funds, prompting it to file for bankruptcy. Last year, Wonderland lost Stein Mart when the discount department store chain closed its doors nationwide.
“It’s a little sad,” Hernandez said. “But you kind of see it like, ‘Well, this place is still going.’”
Longtime patrons such as Mathis don’t mind change — as long as their beloved mall maintains its communal spirit and character.
“I enjoy the ambiance of Wonderland,” Mathis said. “I hope it’s going to be around for many more years.”