The two-level enclosed mall at 3333 W. Touhy Avenue in Lincolnwood, Illinois, is shut and partly fenced off.
Lincolnwood Town Center opened in 1990 as one piece of a larger plan for the old Bell & Howell land.
It stopped letting the public in after July 23, 2026. Demolition began that June, on the southeast anchor building.
The property runs to 31 acres. Kohl's is still open on it. The middle of the mall is waiting its turn, and what replaces the whole thing has been drawn twice in four years without a final zoning approval.
Lincolnwood Town Center opened a quarter empty
The Village Board split on the Town Center application in 1987, and the Village President cast the tie-breaking vote that let it go ahead.
What Hawthorn Realty Group and Melvin Simon & Associates had proposed for the old Bell & Howell land was a whole district: retail, offices, warehouse space, a hotel, and housing.
The shopping center got built first.
Carson Pirie Scott opened its store of about 125,000 square feet on March 3, 1990, 12 days ahead of the rest of the mall.
The grand opening came on March 15.
Inside, four concourses met at a central atrium under a skylight dome about 90 feet high, and from the middle of the building you could see most of the storefronts at once.
Trees ran along the concourses. The floors were marble.
About 45 leases had been signed by then.
Roughly 25 percent of the retail area had no tenant in it, so the mall opened with 430,000 square feet of building and holes in the middle of its own tenant list.
One anchor changed hands twice
Madigan's took the far end of the retail circulation, about 104,200 square feet of it. It closed in 1991, a year in.
JCPenney moved into the same space that year and held it for a decade, so the mall kept two department stores while the name over the door changed.
JCPenney closed in 2001. Kohl's opened in the space in 2003.
That end of the building had carried three names in 13 years.
Carson's still held the other end, and Kohl's, the third occupant of a store that opened as Madigan's, went on to outlast every previous owner the property had.
Carson's left and furniture moved in
In February 2014 the mall was 96.2 percent occupied with 79 tenants. Old Navy, Gap, Victoria's Secret, and Champs Sports traded inside.
Chipotle, Five Guys, Red Lobster, and Olive Garden sat out on the outparcels, around a parking field of 1,646 spaces.
Carson Pirie Scott closed in August 2018, in The Bon-Ton liquidation. That emptied 118,500 square feet at the southeast corner of the mall.
Washington Prime spent an estimated $16 million to $18 million reworking it.
About two-thirds of the old department store reopened in August 2019 as The RoomPlace, 84,000 square feet on two levels running three of the operator's retail brands at once, with an atrium of its own.
The mall still had more than 80 retailers. One of its two anchors was now a furniture floor.
The May 2020 payment that wasn't made
The building was still working.
In March 2021 the escalators ran between the two floors, families used the upper-level play area and the family restroom, shoppers borrowed wheelchairs at no charge, and CTA and Pace buses came onto the property.
Alongside the apparel stores were nail salons, a chiropractor, an optician, and a performing arts academy.
Washington Prime Group had stopped paying for it.
The company, which took the mall from Simon in the 2014 spin-off of smaller centers, skipped the May 2020 payment and received a default notice on a $47.3 million mortgage.
The loan reached maturity in April 2021 with nothing to pay it off, and Washington Prime filed for Chapter 11 that June.
In August 2021 the property became lender-controlled real estate. Torchlight Investors held the investment and Friedman Real Estate ran the building.
A May 2022 appraisal put the mall at $15.2 million. When the loan was written in 2014, the appraisal had been $89.1 million.
Three futures for 31 acres
By September 2022, Torchlight had hired JLL to market the property.
By then the Village had already decided what it wanted there.
Lincolnwood brought in planners in 2021 and adopted a concept plan on June 21, 2022.
It laid out three physical paths for the 31 acres. The first kept more of the existing structure, including Kohl's and The RoomPlace.
The second kept Kohl's and broke the rest of the site into smaller mixed-use blocks.
The third cleared the mall for a new grid of blocks holding housing, commercial space, entertainment, employment, and parks.
Two of the three kept parts of the building standing. The mall was 83 percent occupied that January.
Three years later the site had not sold and vacancy kept climbing.
On August 19, 2025, the Village Board directed staff and the Village attorney to start looking at eminent domain.
The direction authorized a study. It moved no title.
A private sale changed the program
A local development group affiliated with Prairie Ridge Development and Xroads Real Estate Advisors bought the Town Center in December 2025 for $12.3 million.
The Village was notified on the 19th, and the eminent-domain question went with the sale.
The property still had 42 tenants on the day ownership changed.
On April 21, 2026, the Village Board approved a pre-development agreement with the new owner.
The conceptual plan behind it is a retail store of 150,000 to 175,000 square feet, an automobile dealership, and further commercial space.
The 2022 plan's housing, parks, and entertainment uses are not in it, and neither the retailer nor the dealer has been named in public.
The ordinance allows demolition in phases, which Village rules would normally not permit without prompt rebuilding.
Final zoning approval is a separate step, and the agreement carries no economic assistance.
In exchange, the owner has to file for final zoning approval by November 2026, pull a building permit for the large store by April 2027, and post $1.5 million in letters of credit or cash deposits through construction.
What's left at the Town Center site
Exterior demolition started on June 25, 2026, at the southeast building, the one that opened as Carson Pirie Scott and finished under the Harlem Furniture name.
It is the first of three phases. The middle of the enclosed mall is second, and the Kohl's parcel is third.
The enclosed mall at 3333 W. Touhy Avenue in Lincolnwood, Illinois, opened on March 15, 1990, as Lincolnwood Town Center.
It ran its last published hours, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., through July 23, 2026, and closed to the public after that date.
The tenant count fell from 42 in December to about nine by late May. Between March 1 and May 22, 15 Town Center business licenses closed.
Five former Town Center businesses reopened elsewhere in Lincolnwood, on Devon Avenue, on Crawford Avenue, and at three addresses on Touhy.
Crushed concrete from the first phase is stockpiled on the southeast portion of the site, to be reused as base material under future roads and foundations.
CTA moved the Route 82 terminal to the northwest side of the property, in front of Kohl's, which is open on its usual hours and has no announced closing date.
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