Simply an aside: When we at DeBartolo in Youngstown and mall operations opened Century III it was indeed our very first mall with a Food Court. For us at EJD it was a big first step but as expected turned out to be a very successful venture and we repeated from then on a Food Court concept in all of our upcoming and new malls.

With this I recall March of 1973 when I started to manage the first DeBartolo mall in NJ at Brunswick Square. It was only a year later in 1974 when Paramus Park had its Grand Opening about 20-miles away and with the Rouse Companies very first ‘second-floor’ Food Court construction. I naturally attended the Rouse Grand Opening and it became clear to me that the Food Court concept was a major new innovation in the mall-industry. Paramus Park is now credited as the first successful shopping mall Food Court in America. Rouse named its new Food Court presentation “The Picnic.”

Thus at DeBartolo (so many years later) we had a lot of internal discussions on what to naming the Century III Food Court. Or whether it was better to just calling it a "Food Court" in all of our mall signage because this is what shoppers would call it in any event. The argument being that shoppers not wanting to remember another secondary or non-descriptive name.

The Century III Food Court however was after much heated home office discussions given its own name. We called it the "Court Yard." But going forward we never again gave any of our forthcoming Food Courts any special naming and thus our mall directories, signage and collaterals all just called it "The Food Court." This is how things were when for us the world was new and we could do no wrong!

As listed on the upper level map: DeBartolo’s first Food Court called "The Courtyard."