Long before Wannado City at Sawgrass Mills or talk of a theme park at the still dreamed about American Dream mall, there was an attraction at the old 163rd Street Shopping Center.
The outdoor shopping center, which opened in 1956 on the outer rim of North Miami Beach, boasted The Kiddie Park, a mini-amusement park area with a choo-choo train and a Ferris wheel-styled ride with seating that was designed as small mustard-yellow helicopters. Think of the kids carnival rides during the early years of the Miami-Dade County Youth Fair, which started in 1952 at U.S.1 and North Kendall Drive.
The mall also had a go-kart track in the north parking lot until Hurricane Cleo destroyed it in 1964.
At the shopping center’s Kiddie Park, kids also played at quaint fair-styled game booths. Old-timers may recall a rifle shooting game that, if you hit a target, would clang a bell to alert the booth attendant to hand over a prize. Other malls added outdoor arcades in the 1960s and early-’70s.
The Kiddie Park at the 163rd Street Shopping Center had an amusement park, like these helicopter rides, when the North Miami-Dade mall opened in November 1956. By 1980, construction began to enclose the mall and the outdoor amusement had been confined to history pages. The center was also renamed The Mall at 163rd Street. Miami Herald File / Flashback South Florida-Memories & Memorabilia
MORE: Can a $150 million makeover revive this Miami mall? Shopping is just a part of it
Omni International Mall in downtown Miami took the kids park concept indoors when it opened in 1977. That indoor shopping center grew out of a Jordan Marsh anchor store on Biscayne Boulevard and had a full carousel as its main attraction. The Omni arcade also featured a water gun and target booth. Users would shoot a stream of water into a painted porcelain clown’s yawning mouth that would blow up a balloon attached to its head. First to pop won a prize.
Birthday parties at 163rd Street were also fixtures for local kids who celebrated at The Kiddie Park in a colorfully painted air-conditioned Birthday House.
“You can have a great party for as many children as you like, minimum of 12, any day Monday thru Sunday,” an old newspaper ad read. “Ask for Gloria,” emblazoned in bold type.
The Kiddie Park at 163rd Street was dismantled by the late-1970s, and the whole shopping center soon underwent a radical transformation to an indoor mall.
By the mid-1980s, the Mall at 163rd Street started to struggle as the nearby Aventura Mall got more stores and more attention from shoppers.
An undated pre-1980s file photo of Christmas season at the open-air Mall at 163rd Street shopping center. The mall was enclosed beginning in 1980 into 1982.
Follow More of Our Reporting on Uniquely Miami