Standing on East Empire Street in Bloomington, Illinois, sits an enclosed mall with three empty department stores inside it.
It opened as Eastland Shopping Center in February 1967, with two fountains in the corridor and a pagoda at center court. Bergner's arrived in 1973, Kohl's in 1984, Famous-Barr in 1999.
Then the anchors went. Macy's and J.C. Penney closed in 2017, Bergner's and Sears in 2018, and Kohl's was the only department store left.
Today Kohl's, ULTA Beauty, Old Navy, and Planet Fitness are open, 48% of its in-line space leased at the end of 2025, and CBL has the mall on its non-core list without saying which path applies to Eastland.
Sears opened Eastland a year early
Sears opened on February 17, 1966, three miles east of downtown Bloomington, Illinois, on a site still under construction.
The enclosed center it was built to anchor, Eastland Shopping Center at 1615 East Empire Street, wouldn't open for another year.
The store ran 51 merchandise departments, took catalog orders, made draperies to order, and kept an eight-bay garage.
Copaken Realty of Kansas City had broken ground on December 29, 1964, on a $4.5 million project covering about 30 acres.
Free parking for 2,200 cars went in around the building, more than twice what the Kmart across Route 9 could hold four years earlier.
J.C. Penney opened at Eastland on November 10, 1966. Its downtown store had closed the day before.
Lloyd Ringler had come to Bloomington in 1957 under instructions to find a bigger location. The one he got was about four times the size.
Within a few years, Penney's catalog sales at Eastland alone ran higher than everything the downtown store used to sell in a year.
18 stores opened at Eastland on one Thursday
The center opened on Thursday, February 16, 1967.
Between 300 and 350 people stood around the pagoda at center court for the ribbon cutting while Al Pizzamiglio's orchestra played.
That day 18 stores opened.
The corridor was called the Center Mall.
Two fountains and indoor plantings ran along it, and many storefronts had no wall between the selling floor and the walkway.
The advertising promised 72 degrees indoors, whatever the weather outside.
A&P came first among the non-anchor tenants.
Walgreens ran a Grill Room, and there was a Topsy's Sidewalk Cafe and a 31 Flavors, so people were eating in the building 22 years before it had a food court.
Downtown merchants came too: Bachrach's, Chadband's Jewelry, Murray's Boot Shop, and Musicland.
W.H. Roland's decided in 1965 that the new center would pull customers and opened a 12,000-square-foot branch.
In 1972 it added another 13,000 square feet at Eastland while traffic at its downtown store was falling off.
5 anchors by 1999, and 98% full by 2002
Bergner's opened in 1973 at roughly 140,000 square feet, the first newly built department store in Bloomington in more than three decades.
It cost about $4 million, close to what the entire original center had cost six years earlier.
A three-screen cinema opened on March 2, 1973 and ran until March 1993.
Kohl's arrived in 1984 as the fourth anchor, in a $3.7 million expansion that brought in B. Dalton.
A food court followed in 1989, and a full renovation in 1990.
Sears enlarged and updated its own store in 1996 and 1997, going from about 100,000 square feet to about 117,000, with a basement used for storage beneath the auto center.
The fifth anchor took longer.
Famous-Barr wanted the north side, Kohl's objected to the site plan, and the 120,000-square-foot store sat unbuilt about a year before opening in November 1999.
By fall 2002 the mall was 98% occupied with five department stores trading at once. CBL acquired it on November 16, 2005 as part of a three-mall purchase totaling $508.2 million.
College Hills Mall, open in Normal since 1980, was largely demolished in 2004 and reopened the next year as an open-air center around Target and Von Maur.
Famous-Barr became Macy's in 2006.
4 anchors closed in under 2 years
Macy's announced on January 4, 2017 that its Eastland store would close, and it shut on March 31.
That January, CBL bought the Macy's anchor building for $2 million.
J.C. Penney announced its own closing that March and was gone by the end of the year.
CBL rebuilt part of the Penney box.
About 55,000 square feet became Planet Fitness, H&M, and smaller retail, work that took new plumbing, new wiring, and a helicopter to lift three old units off the roof and set new ones down.
H&M opened on October 4, 2018.
By then the rest was going. Bergner's closed on August 31, 2018 in Bon-Ton's liquidation.
Sears announced on August 22 that it would close in November, and when it did, Kohl's was the only conventional department store left in the building.
Outback Steakhouse opened on an outparcel that December.
In-line space had been 94% leased in 2016. By 2019 it was 81%. H&M was gone by early 2022.
The county put early voting near Kohl's
A Youth Escort Policy took effect on September 6, 2013.
On Friday and Saturday nights from 5 p.m. until closing, visitors under 18 have to be with a parent or guardian.
Kohl's sits outside the rule because it has its own exterior door.
McLean County leased Unit 1474, the former MC Sports space near Kohl's, starting January 1, 2024.
It ran early voting there, including weekends, and used it as a voting center for the March and November elections.
The owner had been in front of the McLean County Board of Review that winter, asking for a 40% cut.
Testimony put the building 58% vacant in October 2023.
The owner argued that department-store boxes that size are hard to refill, and the taxing bodies argued the corner still carried redevelopment value.
On January 8, 2024 the board set the estimated market value at $20 million, down from about $26 million.
By that October the city manager was pressing for a redevelopment of the whole site and said parts of the building might have to come down.
By then, the city had data showing more than 1.7 million visits since the beginning of the year.
What's open in 2026, and what's dark
In August 2025 Bloomington approved adding about 62 acres around the mall to the Bloomington-Normal Enterprise Zone, which can waive sales tax on building materials.
At the end of that year, 48% of the in-line space was leased, against an estimated 2.4 million visits.
In the first quarter of 2026 CBL moved Eastland into its non-core category, the label it uses for properties it may redevelop or reposition, or where it may renegotiate the debt or hand the property back to a lender.
It was still on that list on June 30, and CBL hasn't said which of those applies here.
The programming kept running. In March the Easter Bunny was set up near David's Coffee.
Visits were free, photos cost extra, and dogs were welcome on Mondays if leashed or in a carrier.
A carnival ran in the parking field from May 15 to 17.
Fights among juveniles broke out on the Friday and police increased their presence for the rest of the weekend.
By June, one building had changed hands.
Bank of Springfield bought the former Talbots outparcel, a tornado-damaged 1962 building that started as a bank and is being turned back into one.
The former Macy's, Bergner's, and Sears are still vacant.
Kohl's, ULTA Beauty, Old Navy, Planet Fitness, and Outback Steakhouse are still trading, and the doors open at 10 six days a week.
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