Eastland Mall is an enclosed shopping mall in Columbus, Ohio. The mall opened in 1968. There are 4 vacant anchor stores that were once Lazarus, JCPenney, Sears, and Macy's. The mall is owned and managed by Eastland Mall Holdings, LLC. Despite having no anchor stores, the mall's interior is still thriving with many smaller businesses and its food court, unusual for a store lacking anchors and thus having enough tenants to keep it from being a dead mall.
History[]
The mall was built in 1968 by Richard E. Jacobs group, who also developed Columbus's Northland and Westland Malls.[2] It was the first enclosed shopping mall in Columbus.[1] As with the other two "directional" Jacobs malls in Columbus, Eastland's original anchors included J. C. Penney, Sears, and Lazarus.[3]
Although Eastland itself is a single-story mall, all three of its original anchor stores were constructed with two stories of retail space. The Sears store closed off its upper level at some point during the 1980s.
The mall remained under Jacobs' ownership until Glimcher Realty Trust bought it in December 2003. The property became Glimcher's second mall in Columbus, following Polaris Fashion Place. Among Glimcher's first moves with the property was to add a fourth anchor, Kaufmann's. This Kaufmann's was the first in a "lifestyle" prototype featuring a smaller floor plan with wider aisles.[4] The same year, the Lazarus store became Lazarus-Macy's.[5] Macy's moved from the former Lazarus to the former Kaufmann's in 2006 when the Macy's chain purchased Kaufmann's then-parent company.[6] Three years later, Glimcher proposed to demolish the former Lazarus-Macy's building for a new J. C. Penney, while dividing Penney's existing store among new tenants.[7] However, as of 2013 the former Lazarus-Macy's building remains both standing and vacant. J. C. Penney announced the closure of its existing store in 2015.[8]
With the closure and subsequent demolition of Northland in 2002, Eastland is the oldest operating shopping mall in Central Ohio.
Glimcher defaulted on the mall's mortgage loan in 2012 and turned the property over via a deed in lieu of foreclosure to the lender, a CMBS trust that was serviced by LNR Property, in August 2014.[9][10]
In March 2015, the mall was reportedly sold for $9.25 million.[11]
On January 4, 2017, Macy's announced that its Eastland Mall store will close.[12] The store closed in March 2017, leaving Sears as Eastland's only remaining anchor.
On June 6, 2017, Sears announced that its Eastland Mall store would close by early September,[13] leaving the mall entirely without anchor stores.
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City of Columbus, Ohio
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