Hundreds crowd around a nine-man mariachi band at La Gran Plaza de Fort Worth, as Ranchera rings out from trumpets, violins, guitars and an accordion. As the music echoes throughout the mall’s concourse, grandparents show children how to clap with the beat and couples dance in small circles.
It’s a mix of the mall’s typical Sunday shoppers along with people celebrating Mexican Independence Day. A little boy in a green soccer jersey is almost at eye level with the band’s vocalist after being lifted onto the shoulders of a man wearing a red button-down and brown leather cowboy boots.
“En el extrajero, cuánto más quiero yo a mi nación,” the band belts out. “Como Mexico no hay dos.”
“Abroad, how much more do I love my nation. Like Mexico, there aren’t two.”
The Vicente Fernández song remains a beloved homage to the motherland for Mexicans living in the U.S. In many ways, it’s what La Gran Plaza has become during the last 20 years for Latinos in North Texas.
At the mall with more than 300 stores and about 5.9 million visitors each year, Spanish is the language of business. In addition to restaurants and retail, the mall offers chiropractors, lawyers, hairstylists, a library branch, a Fiesta Mart location and a movie theater where new releases are dubbed or subtitled in Spanish.
La Gran Plaza has more than a dozen quinceañera stores and its own mariachi band that performs every Sunday afternoon.
Most Sundays, at least 25,000 people pour into the 1.2 million square foot mall. El Mercado, a former Dillard’s store transformed into a three-story bazaar, houses more than 180 local businesses, selling everything from video game repairs to Mexican candies.
The company that bought and renovated the dying mall in 2004 says that demography is destiny. The Legaspi Co. invested in North Texas’ growing Hispanic population and has since made a legacy by recognizing Latino buying power in untapped markets.
The U.S. Latino economy is expected to continue expanding faster than most first-world economies, according to a 2024 report by the Latino Donor Collaborative. It’s supported by population growth, the group’s youthfulness, business formation, improvements in educational attainment and a general upward mobility Latinos in the U.S. are experiencing.
Dallas-Fort Worth has one of the six largest Hispanic populations in the country, behind Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Houston and Riverside, Calif. In D-FW, 2.3 million Hispanics make up 30% of the population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and Spanish is the primary language for 22% of residents.
When José de Jesús Legaspi, the owner and president of Montebello, Calif.-based The Legaspi Co., bought the indoor mall formerly known as the Fort Worth Town Center in 2004, it was 20% occupied. Within two years, occupancy jumped to 80%.
Now the mall is 92% leased, Legaspi said. The remaining 8% is mostly unleasable basement space outside of one listing. The mall built additional space for a Chuck E. Cheese, a tuition-free charter school, The Academy of Visual and Performing Arts, and an IHOP.
“I don’t know if we have any more room for any growth plans, to tell you the truth,” Legaspi said. “We’re at capacity.”
La Gran Plaza has become an economic engine for southern Fort Worth by creating a gathering space for Latino families and by empowering them to become business owners, Legaspi said. The mall’s local merchants have tended to stay indefinitely.
“We welcome people with dreams,” Legaspi said. “We help them out, open businesses themselves. All of that is very key.”
Regardless of the economic condition, whether it was the Great Recession or more recently COVID-19, La Gran Plaza didn’t feel it, Legaspi said. “People kept on coming.”
The mall generates upwards of $150 million a year in sales tax revenue for the city, Legaspi said. Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker and the city of Fort Worth declared April 12 “La Gran Plaza Day” in recognition of the mall’s anniversary.
Karen Carvajal has worked at Elotes Etc. for the last four years, fielding repeat orders from regulars for Mexican corn, nachos and chips. La Gran Plaza is a place where families can come every week to relax, she said.
“It’s not like the other malls,” Carvajal, 20, said. “It’s a Mexican mall. We sell Mexican food, we sell Mexican clothes.”
Most of the mall’s visitors are either first-generation Mexican Americans or those who recently came from Mexico or elsewhere in Latin America, said Alex Flores, the managing director of Radio Plaza, the station that can be heard throughout the mall. Some of the mall’s visitors can’t travel back and forth. It’s why the mall hosts cultural events filled with music, food and decorations that remind them of home.
“Having a piece of what they feel there is really, really important,” Flores said.
The hope is La Gran Plaza can host traditions like Dia de los Muertos or Las Posadas, a holiday week in December commemorating Mary and Joseph’s journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, that perhaps children haven’t had the opportunity experience yet, Legaspi said.
Ensuring that the mall is a place where people can find culture and tradition and where their customs are embraced and brought to life is why, two decades later, La Gran Plaza continues to be successful, said Marcos Ortiz, the mall’s marketing coordinator.
The diversity of the mall’s offerings and its rich culture is what draws customers from across Dallas-Fort Worth, said Brysa Olvera, 17, a sales associate at Jasmine’s Western Wear.
“It’s kind of like home away from home, you know?” Olvera said.
