Chapel Hills Mall is an enclosed mall on Briargate Boulevard in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Two of its biggest spaces are an aquarium and a pickleball facility.
The mall opened in August 1982 with four anchors and added Joslins, Mervyn's, and a second wing over the next four years.
The old anchors disappeared one at a time. Sears closed in March 2019, and its 141,000-square-foot building was demolished two years later.
Dillard's and Macy's are still open. Above the aquarium, 44,800 square feet was leased to an adventure park in 2025, and that space is dark.
Chapel Hills opened second
The first business open on the property sold tickets.
General Cinema started showing films in a six-screen theater attached to the mall on June 11, 1982, and the mall behind it stayed closed until August 4.
Chapel Hills Mall is a two-level enclosed shopping mall at 1710 Briargate Boulevard, on the north side of Colorado Springs, Colorado, near North Academy Boulevard and Interstate 25.
General Growth Properties and Homart Development Company built it.
It opened on August 4, 1982 with Sears, Kmart, H.J. Wilson's Catalog Showrooms, and Fashion Bar.
In 2026 its newest large tenants are an aquarium, 24 pickleball courts, and a 13-screen cinema, and the building is for sale.
El Paso County commissioners had approved the project in August 1974. Construction ran from late 1979 into the middle of 1982.
By the time the anchors opened their doors, the theater next to them had been running for weeks.
15 screens by the end of 1986
Chapel Hills added department stores in two big steps, and it added screens on the same schedule.
A 135,000-square-foot expansion opened in March 1985 with Joslins as its new department store, and Joslins took another 43,000 square feet of empty lower-wing space in 1987.
In September 1986, about 60 more storefronts and a two-story Mervyn's opened.
Three months later, on December 12, 1986, a separate nine-screen cinema opened on the property.
Chapel Hills now had 15 screens in two buildings, against the six it started with.
H.J. Wilson's had become Service Merchandise by then. Six anchors, 15 screens, and the mall was four years old.
The rink lasted eight years
In 1998 the mall finished a roughly $40 million rebuilding program, and the largest thing it put inside was a sheet of ice.
The Ice Arena at Chapel Hills opened that June, regulation size, in the middle of an enclosed shopping mall.
The same program added a new food court, a two-story Borders, a climbing wall, children's entertainment, and a Ruby Tuesday.
Design International did the design work, and it took a certificate of merit from the International Council of Shopping Centers in 2000.
A new three-story Dillard's had opened the year before.
So the mall went into 1999 with more department-store space than it had ever carried and a public rink in the common area.
The rink filled up.
Its Learn to Skate program had registered more than 1,500 skaters by January 2000, and the arena ran with a skating director, three assistant directors, and about 30 coaches and staff.
Then a retailer wanted the floor.
Dick's Sporting Goods negotiated for the arena space in 2005, and the rink closed in June 2006, eight years after it opened.
Dick's opened on two levels in roughly 50,000 square feet in early 2007.
Mervyn's had closed on January 21, 2006, five months before the ice went out, and Burlington moved into that box in 2007.
Chapel Hills came out of that stretch with the same number of large tenants and one fewer thing to do.
Kmart and both theaters came down
Kmart closed in 2009, after 27 years in the box it opened with, and 49 jobs went with it.
The building was owned separately from the mall, so it stayed empty while the corridors beside it kept operating.
General Growth went into Chapter 11 the same year.
By June 2011 the mall belonged to a Coyote Management and Garrison Investment Group partnership, and in 2012 Garrison bought the empty Kmart.
The purchase made the demolition possible.
The old theaters closed on October 26, 2012, the 1982 six-screen and the 1986 nine-screen both, and crews took down the Kmart box and the theater buildings together.
A 13-screen Carmike opened on the east side of the mall in 2013, and AMC took it over later.
The first original 1982 anchor removed from the property was replaced by a cinema.
One box left retail, one became courts
The mall changed hands again in 2018.
A partnership of Namdar Realty Group, Mason Asset Management, and CH Capital Group paid $33.5 million for the mall-controlled property, less than half what the previous owners had paid seven years earlier.
Sears closed in March 2019. Its store and its 12.6 acres were separately owned, and the parcel left the mall's retail footprint for good.
Evergreen Devco bought it in May 2021 for $5.7 million, the 141,000-square-foot building was demolished that year, and 300 apartments were finished on the site in 2023.
Burlington closed in early 2020 and went the other way.
Its two-level box, 80,400 square feet, reopened in October 2024 as Peak Pickleball, with 24 indoor courts across two floors and a non-member rate of $10 an hour.
Mervyn's built that space to sell clothes. You book it by the hour now.
What's open at Chapel Hills now
One of the largest remaining spaces in the mall got split by floor.
The end that held JCPenney from March 1995 to May 2014 was divided into 31,300 square feet downstairs and 44,800 upstairs, where Gordmans lasted eight months and American Freight came later.
Jungle Reef opened on the lower level on March 20, 2026.
It's an interactive aquarium with a 60,000-gallon shark tank, a 30,000-gallon stingray tank, a 10,000-gallon koi tank, plus reptiles and birds.
It opened before all the animal exhibits were finished, 15 months after a December 2024 stop-work order pushed it past its summer 2025 target.
Opening-weekend tickets were $22 for adults and $17 for children.
The floor above it is leased and closed.
Fun City Adventure Park signed for the 44,800 square feet in the third quarter of 2025, and the mall counts it among the anchors on its own leasing material.
The company's Colorado Springs page still says coming soon.
Chapel Hills is open and on the market.
Mason Asset Management manages 562,700 square feet of it, the sale listing was up by January 2026 with no asking price, and Dillard's and Macy's still hold either end of the building.
Jungle Reef opens at 11 a.m. Monday through Saturday and at noon on Sunday, inside a mall that has been listed for sale.
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