The green space off US 41 North between Marion Avenue and Retta Esplanade, was once the home of the Punta Gorda Shopping Mall. After a fire destroyed the Hotel Charlotte Harbor in 1959, the property was developed for the Shopping Mall which opened in the mid-1960s.
Later, in 1967, Al Johns and Bud Cole purchased the waterfront area at the end of the mall from the developer, Wilbur Marvin, to build a Howard Johnson's Motor Lodge. The Springhill Suites and Four Points stand there today.
During its life the mall housed the Harbor Cinema, McCrory’s, Publix, Eckert’s Drugs, Beall’s and other retail stores. On the corner of Marion Avenue and 41 was a building originally a B&B market, then Earl Hadley’s Hardware store in the late 1950s, and for a time the home of Karl Elhmer’s German Restaurant. Also near the mall along the Tamiami Trail over time there was a Royal Castle followed by a Chinese restaurant and a gas station.
The mall by 2003 was aging, then the old shopping plaza and Karl Elhmer’s, after being badly damaged in Hurricane Charley in 2004, were demolished.
Now this major section of Punta Gorda’s downtown, once a bustling retail area occupied by the mall, remains vacant. Today called City Marketplace, it is used for transient events and according to recent commercial real estate notices listed for sale.
