Japanese fashion giant Uniqlo will make its highly anticipated North Texas debut with its first store at Galleria Dallas.
The fast-fashion retailer will open its Dallas store in October and will span two floors and approximately 20,000 square feet, the Dallas Business Journal reported.
Uniqlo’s opening is in line with the Galleria’s broader strategy to expand its retail offering in a market where tenants face strong competition for premium space. The store will be located near international fashion retailer Mango, which opened last fall.
Uniqlo’s Dallas location is part of a larger expansion in Texas that includes five stores across the state. In addition to the Galleria, Uniqlo will open stores at Parks Mall in Arlington, Stonebriar Centre in Frisco and two stores in the Houston area. The retailer aims to have 200 stores across North America by 2027.
Opened in 1982, the mall was previously owned by UBS Realty Investors until a unit of Metropolitan Life purchased the 1.9 million-square-foot property in 2022.
The mall’s management, Trademark Property, has improved its offering and appearance, attracted tenants such as The Royal Standard and Lindsay Nicholas New York and expanded existing stores such as Lululemon.
The biggest lease this year was Netflix’s experimental concept “Netflix House,” which will span 10,000 square meters in the former Marshall Fields department store. When it opens next fall, it will feature themed dining, gaming and retail.
Other markets have struggled to recover since relying on online retail due to the pandemic. For example, another MetLife building on Chicago’s famous Magnificent Mile recently lost Sephora as a tenant.
But with tremendous population and job growth, retail in Texas is reaching a whole new level.
Dallas-Fort Worth has a record occupancy rate of 95.2 percent, according to Weitzman. In the 1990s, when there was less space to fill, occupancy in the region never exceeded 89 percent.
According to Weitzman, about 1.9 million square feet of retail space is expected to be built by the end of this year. The majority of that will be concentrated in large anchor stores “with a tiny amount of peripheral space,” Weitzman analysts wrote. “Expanding concepts are competing for the best-located space.”
— Andrew Terrell
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