February 27, 1974. In the middle of a cold Midwestern winter, a new enclosed mall opened on 16th Street in Moline, Illinois.
General Growth Properties had bought the 47-acre site in 1966 and spent about $12 million to build SouthPark Mall.
Three department stores served as its main anchors - Montgomery Ward, Petersen Harned Von Maur, and Younkers. Between them, the mall had room for 75 shops.
The Quad Cities sat on both sides of the Mississippi River, in Illinois and Iowa. It was an industrial area shaped by major employers such as John Deere.
People came from Rock Island, East Moline, and nearby towns to do their shopping in one place, and SouthPark was built for that purpose.
Nothing like it existed yet on the Illinois side of the river.
When the mall opened that morning, it followed the familiar model used for Midwestern malls at the time.
It had two levels, enclosed walkways, department stores at the ends, and smaller stores in the middle. That setup had already succeeded in many similar cities, and Moline fit the pattern.
Nobody walking through the doors that February morning was thinking about future anchor closures, struggling malls, or the long decline of department stores over the next fifty years.
The building had opened, and Moline had a new shopping center on 16th Street.
SouthPark Mall Expands Twice Before 1991
JCPenney arrived in the late 1970s. Most records place the addition in 1978, though a Quad-City Times image caption ties a JCPenney opening at SouthPark Mall to October 25, 1979.
The difference likely reflects a staged opening or a records discrepancy - either way, JCPenney joined the anchor lineup and stayed for decades.
The larger expansion came in 1990. Sears opened as a fifth anchor that year, and the mall added a food court, unveiled that October, with multiple restaurants.
That new wing - Sears at one end, the food court along the corridor - gave SouthPark its biggest footprint ever; both structures would eventually be demolished entirely.
Five anchors and a food court put SouthPark Mall in super-regional territory for a metro area of its size. For the next two decades, the property ran on the 1990 infrastructure without further expansion.
Some anchor chains filling the lineup in those years all carried their own national difficulties, which eventually arrived in Moline.
Three Ownership Eras and a Bargain Sale
General Growth Properties built SouthPark Mall and held it through the early years.
By 1998, Simon Property Group had acquired a 50 percent interest in the property. In 2011, SouthPark still appeared among Simon's holdings as a joint venture.
Macerich was part of the same structure by the mid-2000s, with Simon managing operations at the time. Macerich took full control of SouthPark in 2012 after its partnership with Simon ended at the close of 2011.
That ownership held until April 30, 2025. The sale price was $10.5 million for an 802,000-square-foot regional retail center.
During the 2013-2015 redevelopment push, Macerich had put roughly $28 million into renovations.
The 2025 price fell well below that figure, and Macerich took a loss on the transaction.
Kohan Retail Investment Group was the buyer. The company holds a portfolio of regional malls across the country and now lists SouthPark Mall among its properties.
What Kohan planned to do with the building was not publicly clear at the time of sale - and within months of the transaction closing, things became even more uncertain.
Anchor After Anchor Closes Its Doors
Montgomery Ward closed in early 2001. The space sat empty for about three years before Dillard's opened in the former Ward location in 2004, giving the mall a replacement anchor in a box that had gone dark.
Sears was next. On July 12, 2013, Sears announced it would close at SouthPark Mall after 24 years as an anchor.
By that point, Old Navy had already departed - closing on May 29, 2013, months before the Sears announcement.
Dick's Sporting Goods opened on April 24, 2015, in a new 45,000-square-foot store employing about 45 workers.
The opening was tied directly to the redevelopment of the demolished Sears side of the mall and was the most significant new anchor arrival in years.
Ashley Furniture later occupied about 30,000 square feet near the 16th Street entrance, configured as an outward-facing space rather than a traditional inline mall tenant.
Younkers survived until 2018. When parent company Bon-Ton moved toward liquidation in April of that year.
The final closure fell on August 29, 2018, leaving Von Maur as the only anchor with a connection to opening day - the chain had been at SouthPark Mall since 1974 under the name Petersen Harned Von Maur.
Demolition, Renovation, and a New Direction
On September 17, 2013, the City of Moline passed redevelopment ordinances for SouthPark Mall.
The city created a tax increment financing district, or TIF district, and approved a plan that included tearing down parts of the mall, repairing and updating the exterior facade, adding new signs, improving the parking areas, and changing the access point from John Deere Road in coordination with the Illinois Department of Transportation.
That TIF district remained in place until December 31, 2023.
The project removed about 250,000 square feet within the larger redevelopment area. The Sears building and the food court made up 125,000 square feet of the space that was demolished.
By April 2014, demolition of the food court and former Sears was underway, eleven new stores had been announced, and current tenants were remodeling their spaces.
By November 2014, the main construction work was finished. The old Sears wing and the food court were gone, the interior updates were complete, and the parking improvements were nearly done.
Shoppers now had free Wi-Fi, new seating, updated lighting, and a children's area.
Macerich was moving SouthPark toward a smaller mall built around the shopping experience, instead of keeping the larger super-regional layout from 1990.
The Revenue Engine Moline Could Not Ignore
In 2015, SouthPark Mall brought in more sales-tax revenue than any other property in the Illinois Quad Cities.
That helps explain why Moline kept supporting the redevelopment with TIF funding for years instead of stepping back and letting the property deal with its problems on its own.
By late 2017, Macerich had spent about $28 million on renovations. Sales-tax revenue had climbed above the level SouthPark produced before the redevelopment.
On December 11, 2017, Olive Garden opened across from the mall. It was the kind of restaurant the city had spent years trying to add to the commercial area around SouthPark.
For Moline, the mall's importance went beyond the enclosed building itself.
The outlot businesses around it mattered to the city's revenue just as much as the inline stores inside the mall.
In 2007, SouthPark Mall had 1,026,000 square feet and was 88.2 percent occupied.
By 2024, after the demolition, the property measured 802,000 square feet, and only 64.8 percent of the mall and freestanding space was leased.
More than 200,000 square feet had been cut away, and the property still did not fill the space that was left.
Unpaid Taxes and an Uncertain Future Ahead
By August 2024, the mayor was publicly calling SouthPark a "zombie mall." The city's TIF district had already ended.
It was dissolved effective December 31, 2023, after the city determined that the district's project costs and obligations had been paid or would be retired.
The city had expected an "eater-tainment" business to take over part of SouthPark Mall in 2025 and help push redevelopment forward.
That plan ended when Macerich sold the mall to Kohan.
By January 2026, Kohan had not paid any property taxes for the 2025 tax year and had built up more than $400,000 in missed increment payments. Tax buyers had temporarily covered that debt.
SouthPark stayed open through all of this. Dick's Sporting Goods, Von Maur, JCPenney, Dillard's Clearance Center, and Shoe Dept. Encore are still operating there. Restaurants include Habanero's Mexican Grill, Arby's, and Olive Garden.
More than 40 specialty stores still operate in and around the mall. In early 2026, SouthPark remains open but weakened, with no settled plan for what comes next.
SouthPark Mall
Shopping mall in Moline, IL
Address: 4500 16th St, Moline, IL 61265
Opened: February 27, 1974
Developer: General Growth Properties
Owner: Kohan Retail Investment Group
Floor area: 825,000 sq ftClosest cities:
Davenport, IA
Bettendorf, IA
Rock Island, IL
East Moline, IL
Silvis, IL
Milan, IL
Eldridge, IA
