There's a certain kind of memory that stays with places like Northbrook Court. It is not really nostalgia, more like what is left over from Saturday afternoons that once seemed to last forever.
The sculptures stood in the corridors like they'd always been there and always would be. Families moving through the place with nowhere specific to be, which was sort of the whole point.
The mall opened on March 17, 1976, on 130 acres off Lake Cook Road, wedged between the Tri-State Tollway and the Edens Expressway, about 25 miles north of downtown Chicago.
Homart Development Company, which was a subsidiary of Sears, put up the money. Architectonics, Inc. drew the plans - two floors, inward-facing, 5,100 parking spaces, the whole package.
The anchors at opening were Lord & Taylor, Neiman Marcus, and Sears, with I. Magnin following shortly after, and that lineup wasn't accidental.
The North Shore has always known what it is, and a mall anchored by Neiman Marcus and I. Magnin was making a statement about the neighborhood it served.
Inside, sculptor Charles Owen Perry had placed large works throughout the corridors, each named after a historical figure in science - Archimedes, Leonardo da Vinci, Gerardus Mercator, and Giovanni Domenico Cassini.
A mall that shows art and names it after Cassini wants you to feel something besides just wanting to shop for clothes, and for many years, that is what people felt when they came in.
Northbrook Court on Film: Weird Science and Ordinary People
John Hughes grew up in Northbrook, went to Glenbrook North High School, and when he needed a mall for "Weird Science" in 1985, he came back to the one he knew.
The exterior shots were filmed along the side that now has California Pizza Kitchen and the space that used to be The Claim Company.
The inside appeared, too, though the mall has changed enough since then that you'd have to know what you were looking for.
Back in 1980, a scene from "Ordinary People" quietly featured Northbrook Court.
Mary Tyler Moore's character, Beth Jarrett, shops at Neiman Marcus and rides the escalator. It only lasts about thirty seconds, but people still remember that moment.
Robert Redford directed that film. It won four Academy Awards, and part of it takes place on an escalator in Northbrook, Illinois.
What both productions have in common is that Northbrook Court didn't need to be faked or recreated, it was used as the location.
Its clean, recognizable suburban feel gives those scenes an easy authenticity.
Sears Leaves, and the Shuffling Begins
Sears closed its Northbrook Court store in 1983 - awkward timing, given that Homart, the company that built the mall, was a Sears subsidiary.
The logic was simple enough: the Northbrook store was pulling from the same customers as Sears locations at Hawthorn Mall and Golf Mill Mall, and something had to give.
The space became a prototype JCPenney that same year.
JCPenney lasted until 1992, then the building came down. Marshall Field's opened on that site in 1995 - a much better fit for a mall that had Neiman Marcus at one end - and ran there until the Macy's conversion in 2006.
Meanwhile, I. Magnin had closed in 1991, leaving a hole on the other side of the building that took five years to fill.
General Cinema eventually opened there on November 22, 1996, with 14 screens. AMC took over the theater operation in 2002 and turned it into an AMC Dine-In Theatres.
A free-standing Crate & Barrel home store opened on the northwest corner that same year.
Arhaus came later, opening at Northbrook Court in May 2014 in the former Mark Shale space on the lower level. Neiman Marcus, through all of it, never budged.
When Northbrook Court Removed Its Food Court
In 2007, someone at Northbrook Court decided the food court was the problem. The whole thing came out.
Forever 21 took over most of the space, and four restaurant slots replaced what had been a full dining area. Chinese Gourmet Express, Tony & Bruno's, Subway, and Corner Bakery Cafe moved into those spots.
It was supposed to represent a more refined approach to mall dining. Years later, Tony & Bruno's was the only one still there.
The rest had turned over, the concept had quietly stopped being called innovative, and the mall had essentially traded a working food court for a Forever 21 that itself would eventually close in 2025.
Dining did expand in other corners of the building. California Pizza Kitchen opened on the north side in August 2010. Di Pescara settled in and stayed.
A P.F. Chang's outparcel went up outside. The Neiman Marcus restaurant - originally called The Zodiac, later rebranded NM Cafe - kept operating inside the store.
But scattered sit-down spots spread around the perimeter are not the same thing as a food court, and shoppers who came to Northbrook Court in the 1990s knew the difference.
The Anchors That Did Not Make It Out
Macy's announced its Northbrook Court closure on May 11, 2019, as part of a plan to shut 13 stores nationally. The store closed that summer.
The building came down later, opening up a cleared stretch of property that has been sitting in various states of planning ever since.
Then came August 27, 2020, and Lord & Taylor announcing liquidation at all of its stores - bankruptcy and the pandemic arriving at nearly the same moment, and the closures unfolding from there.
The Northbrook location had been there since opening day in 1976. A discount concept called Shopper's Find moved into the space in 2021 and was gone by 2022.
H&M ran a two-story store that opened in 2011 and closed on January 8, 2022. The exits kept coming, and the mall didn't have the tenant pipeline to absorb them anymore.
By the time 2025 arrived and Apple announced in February it was closing a store that had been there roughly two decades, followed by Lululemon, Sephora, Forever 21, Auntie Anne's, Louis Vuitton, and the Lego Store relocating to Old Orchard in December, the math was getting hard to ignore.
A $750 Million Plan, Three Years and Counting
Brookfield Properties has owned Northbrook Court since 1995. In late April 2023, it presented a redevelopment plan to the Northbrook Village Board. The project was priced at $750 million.
The plan would completely remake the roughly 100-acre property. It called for outdoor shopping and restaurants on the northeast side.
The west side would have housing, including apartments, row houses, and townhomes. The site would also include parks, open space, and a layout designed for walking.
It would look very different from the current mall, which faces inward.
The village moved through its part of the process fairly quickly. It signed a non-binding pre-development agreement on May 16, 2023.
During the summer, officials held hearings on zoning, a TIF plan, and a new Business District designation.
On October 30, 2023, the Village Board approved the full package.
That included a redevelopment and economic incentive agreement, a 23-year TIF district, and a $98 million incentive package funded by TIF money and sales tax rebates.
The village also added a new 1% sales tax to help pay for improvements. But the incentives do not begin until 50% of the retail space is leased.
In March 2025, the village approved special permits allowing housing construction to begin before the retail portion.
This change reflected high interest rates and stronger demand for suburban multifamily housing, meaning apartment-style housing with multiple units.
Village President Kathryn Ciesla said the move would give Brookfield more flexibility to build momentum for the larger redevelopment.
The earliest possible groundbreaking for the housing portion is summer 2026. As of early 2026, the property still looks essentially the same as it did when the plan was first announced.
The Mall in Early 2026, Such as It Is
Walk through Northbrook Court today, and the vacancy is the first thing you notice - not the stores that are there, but the ones that aren't.
Gates down. Empty storefronts where recognizable names used to be. The hallways are quiet in a way that a two-level regional mall was never designed to be quiet.
What's left is a strange mix. Tiffany & Co. and Tommy Bahama sit in a mall with roughly two dozen total tenants. California Pizza Kitchen and Di Pescara still draw lunch crowds.
Neiman Marcus - open since March 17, 1976, never left, apparently not planning to - is still the anchor, still the reason a certain segment of North Shore shoppers makes the trip.
The company has actually said it's interested in what redevelopment might bring. AMC runs its 14 screens on the south end, and the dine-in format gives it something a standard multiplex doesn't.
Pace buses on routes 213, 422, 471, and 626 still stop here. The highway access is the same as it's always been - I-94, I-294, and the Edens Expressway put the mall within easy reach of most of the North Shore.
That part works fine. It's what you find when you get there that's changed. Northbrook Court opened in 1976 as a place you could spend the whole day.
Right now, it's a place you can probably see in forty minutes, and everyone involved - Brookfield, the village, the tenants still hanging on - knows it.
