Most mornings, the walk out of the gate follows the same rhythm. Past the tree line, onto the paved stretch of the American Tobacco Trail, over the pedestrian bridge that spans I-40, and into the parking apron of The Streets at Southpoint. It is one of the quieter perks of life in Hills of Rosemont: a private, gated community with its own lakes and trails that still ends, a mile or so later, at a regional mall without anyone touching a car door.
For a long stretch of years, though, that walk ended somewhere half-finished. The old Sears anchor sat boarded up on the mall's east side, a dead corner in a shopping center that opened back in 2002. Sears announced it would close as part of a national round of shutdowns at the end of 2018. The box stayed empty through most of a decade of Triangle growth, a quiet reminder that even a mall doing well overall can carry a dead limb for years.
That changed. Dick's House of Sport, a two-story flagship format, opened in the old Sears space in October 2025. It was not an isolated fix. By the time Black Friday 2025 arrived, every storefront at Southpoint was filled, a rare position for a mall built in the early 2000s in a retail climate where shoppers increasingly chase newer mixed-use developments over enclosed malls. The gap that took seven years to close was part of a broader tightening that touched a handful of spaces most trail walkers had stopped noticing.
The Bridge Was Built for This Exact Walk
The connection between Hills of Rosemont's trail network and Southpoint is not an accident of geography. The pedestrian bridge over I-40 was built specifically to link the two halves of the American Tobacco Trail's Durham County section, with construction finishing in April 2013 and the bridge finally opening in February 2014 after delays tied to the protective fencing. On the north end, the trail is anchored by the American Tobacco Campus in downtown Durham. On the south end, it is anchored by Southpoint itself. The mall was not incidental to the trail's design. It was one of the two points the whole route was built to reach.
Rosemont's own community materials describe the neighborhood as offering convenient access to the American Tobacco Trail alongside its private lakes and walking paths, one of the handful of amenities the community lists as part of daily life behind the gates. That framing matters here, because it means the mall at the other end of the trail was always meant to function as an extension of the neighborhood's own footprint, not a separate errand requiring a car and a parking deck.
What Actually Filled In
The specific changes at Southpoint over the past year give the walk a different destination than it had even two years ago.
| Space | What Was There | What's There Now | When It Changed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Former Sears anchor | Closed, empty since the 2018 national closures | Dick's House of Sport (two-story flagship) | Opened October 2025 |
| Former California Pizza Kitchen | Closed restaurant space | Capital One Café | Opened April 2026 |
| Smaller-format spaces | Vacant or turned-over retail | LEGO Store, Läderach Chocolate, Rowan (piercing and jewelry) | Recently opened |
| Announced, not yet open | Vacant | Pop Mart | Announced April 2026, no confirmed opening date |
The gap between the two anchor spaces is worth sitting with. Sears sat empty for close to seven years before Dick's took the box. The smaller-format spaces, by contrast, turned over in a matter of months once leasing activity picked up. That is a pattern typical of aging regional malls: the biggest boxes are the hardest to fill and the last to move, while the smaller storefronts around them respond much faster once a property starts drawing new interest.
Why Now, Not Three Years Ago
The timing lines up with a bigger shift in how Southpoint's owner is treating the property. In 2023, Durham's city council approved a rezoning that opened the door to apartments, offices, and a hotel on the land around the mall, following a planning commission vote that had initially gone the other way. That approval did not produce new buildings overnight. It created the legal framework for Brookfield, the mall's owner, to pursue that larger redevelopment in phases.
Filling the Sears box with a sporting goods flagship and turning a defunct restaurant space into a café are small moves next to apartments and a hotel. But they read as the leasing side of the same push, a signal that the property is being actively managed toward a longer horizon rather than left to decline the way some 2002-era malls have. For anyone whose daily trail walk ends at this mall, that means the version of Southpoint at the other end of the bridge is likely to keep changing over the next few years, not settle into whatever it looks like this fall.
What This Adds to the Walk
None of this turns a trip to Southpoint into a special occasion. It changes what is actually reachable without a car on an ordinary Saturday:
- Dick's House of Sport for anything gear-related, now a real destination rather than a boarded storefront to walk past
- The 17-screen AMC with IMAX, already part of the mall's outdoor Main Street section
- LEGO Store and Läderach Chocolate for the kind of errand that used to mean a longer drive
- Capital One Café for a coffee stop that did not exist in that spot two years ago
- Longtime sit-down options like Maggiano's Little Italy and The Cheesecake Factory, still anchoring the outdoor stretch
- Pop Mart, announced for the property but without a confirmed opening date yet, worth watching for over the coming months
The gated peace of Hills of Rosemont is not what changed here. What changed is what waits at the far end of the trail most residents already use. A mall that spent years carrying a dead anchor now has one less blank spot, and the smaller storefronts around it are filling faster than they have in a long time.
Karen Coe Realty Group pays attention to shifts like this because they shape what daily life actually feels like in Western Wake and the Triangle, not because a mall renovation changes anyone's plans. If you are curious what a changing neighborhood or a changing market means for your own address, Request Your Home Valuation or reach out to the team anytime.
