Centro del Sur Mall

Centro del Sur Mall is a shopping mall in Ponce, Puerto Rico. At the time of its inauguration in 1962, it was Puerto Rico's largest mall and “the most modern mall in the Caribbean.” It is located at the intersection of Puerto Rico routes PR-163 and PR-1 . Its original building cost was $2,500,000 . It has been enlarged several times; including in 1991, in 2005, and again in 2010; this last time to accommodate the megastore Burlington.

The mall opened on 13 October 1962, forever changing the mom-and-pop retail paradigm of shoppers in southern Puerto Rico. At the time of its opening, it consisted of 120,000 sq ft of retail space. This was increased to 220,000 sq ft in 1991. Accessed 9 February 2018.</ref> An additional enlargement occurred in 2005 bringing the total square footage to 249,000. In 2010, a new tenant, Burlington Coat Factory, contracted with CCM for a facility requiring 70,000sf over what the maximum available single-store space was at the time and its owner did a build-to-suit for the new tenant bringing the total mall footage to the current 300,000sf. Various adjacent stores, banks, and restaurants bring the total effective area to over 350,000. With over 350,000 square feet of retail space, and located in the heart of the city, it was Ponce's first shopping mall for almost four decades. It is owned and managed by Commercial Centers Management, the largest commercial centers management company in Puerto Rico. It is currently anchored by Marshalls and Burlington department stores. The opening of Centro del Sur, Puerto Rico's first large-scale shopping plaza, marked southern Puerto Rico's turning point from a mom-and pap store based business model to a large-scale central shopping plaza paradigm. The mall is unique in that it is the only mall in Puerto Rico that provides mall space for community events, and the only mall with a yearly Miss event with its Miss Centro del Sur Mall pageant.

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