Remembering Skyland Park Shopping Center

If you drive along Skyland Boulevard today, it’s hard to imagine that the commercial stretch once held the bustling open-air retail capital of South Tuscaloosa. Long before shopping trends drifted entirely toward indoor malls, the sprawling asphalt lot and storefronts made up Skyland Park Shopping Center—a place that holds a uniquely colorful chapter in local memory, bridging the gap between discount bargains, college lecture halls, and one unforgettable carnival-style thrill.

Back in the late 1960s and 1970s, Skyland Park was the destination for Saturday errands.

The Heyday of Gaylord’s and Strip Center Shopping

Built in the late 1960s as suburban Tuscaloosa expanded along the southern bypass, Skyland Park was anchored by the regional giant of discount retail: Gaylord’s.

For families across the county, Gaylord’s was where you went for just about everything—school clothes, household hardware, sporting goods, records, and garden tools. Joining Gaylord’s along the strip over the years were familiar community staples:

• A busy Winn-Dixie anchor for the week’s grocery runs.
• Five-and-dime counters like TG&Y, where kids could spend spare pocket change on candy or small toy soldiers.
• An assortment of dry cleaners, auto supply shops, and local specialty storefronts.

The Legend of the Giant Parking Lot Slide

Ask anyone who grew up around Tuscaloosa in the late 1960s or early ’70s what they remember most about Skyland Park, and chances are they won’t mention sales circulars or discount aisles.

Their eyes will light up, and they’ll immediately ask: “Do you remember the giant slide?”

Standing tall out in the middle of the blacktop was one of the era’s iconic Super Slides (or Astro Slides)—a towering multi-lane fiberglass monster mounted on heavy steel scaffolding that became an unmistakable roadside landmark.

Kids would fork over a pocketful of nickels or dimes at the wooden ticket booth at the bottom, grab a rough burlap potato sack, and make the long, windy trek up the wooden stairs. At the summit, looking out over rows of station wagons baking in the Alabama heat, you’d climb into the burlap bag, pull the rough cloth tight around your knees, and launch down the undulating waves. On a hot summer afternoon, when the fiberglass was slicked with wax and the burlap was well-polished, that stomach-dropping drop felt like hitting fifty miles an hour. It was an undisputed rite of passage while parents worked through the shopping list inside.

The “Gaylord Tech” Era and the Ghost of the Slide

By the late 1970s and 1980s, retail traffic began migrating north toward McFarland Mall and the indoor University Mall. As commercial vacancies grew, the state stepped in. Seeking room to house Shelton State’s expanding programs, they converted the old retail bays into classrooms, lecture halls, and administrative offices.

Interestingly enough, there weren’t actually any technical hands-on shop classes out there on the boulevard—the curriculum on Skyland was almost entirely academic. But community nicknames have a way of sticking regardless of curriculum, and locals quickly coined the title “Gaylord Tech” (or “Shopping Center College”). It was a moniker worn with fond humor by the faculty and thousands of students who sat for history lectures, English compositions, and algebra tests inside spaces that had once displayed discount racks and hardware aisles.

During my own years working for Shelton State, I worked right there at the Skyland Campus for a few years. My workspace was located in a set of offices not attached to the main shopping center building. Even decades after the shopping crowds had thinned and the amusement rides had vanished, the site’s past refused to disappear completely. Right out behind our office building, if you looked down at the weathered asphalt of the parking lot, you could still clearly see the heavy iron anchors bolted into the ground—the enduring footprints where that massive fiberglass slide had once thrilled generations of local kids.

Moving On

That chapter eventually came to a close. Shelton State continued to grow, outgrowing the adapted shopping center setup entirely. The college relocated off Skyland to build its modern flagship Martin Campus down on the Greensboro Cutoff (Highway 69 South), leaving the old commercial strip behind for good.

The slide has been gone for decades, the burlap sacks are long retired, and the college days on Skyland are part of local history. But every now and then, thinking back to those old iron anchors behind the office, it’s easy to remember a time when Skyland was wide-open highway, and an afternoon at the shopping center was the biggest adventure in town.