Spring Hill Mall builds a new center
The land that became Spring Hill Mall had once grown trees for city parks, part of the long-running D. Hill Nursery.
By 1973, the nursery was closing, and two nearby villages began reviewing plans for a new regional shopping center.
Homart Development Company, a Sears subsidiary, took charge of the project and filed the first construction documents that year.
Architectonics Inc. drew the plans for an enclosed center with skylights and broad interior corridors for year-round shopping.
The development covered about 90 acres, divided between West Dundee and Carpentersville, requiring joint municipal agreements.
Crews cleared the last nursery rows and installed foundations as local boards signed off on zoning and utilities.
Marshall Field's and Sears became the first department stores to commit, giving Homart the anchor leases it needed to proceed.
Through the late 1970s, steel frames rose across the site, and paving spread outward into hundreds of parking spaces.
When the mall opened, it marked the first major regional mall in the area, a concrete structure replacing the old fields.
Crowds and anchors shape early success
The mall opened in October 1980. People came from Elgin, Dundee, Carpentersville, and towns farther out to see it.
Sears and Marshall Field's were the two main stores.
Between them stretched wide, bright hallways full of smaller shops and food stands.
The place was busy from the start.
In 1983, JCPenney moved in from downtown Elgin. Joseph Spiess followed the next year.
Those two additions made the mall a regional stop, not just a local one.
Bergner-Weise joined too and changed its name to Carson Pirie Scott in 1990.
Five department stores operated there by then, and every one of them pulled steady traffic.
Around the property, new restaurants opened. Red Lobster. Olive Garden.
Families started spending whole afternoons there, eating and shopping.
Both towns collected record sales tax.
By the early 1990s, Spring Hill Mall was full, and weekends looked like parades of cars coming and going all day.
Cracks appear in the lineup
By 2011, the quiet started to settle in.
JCPenney closed its doors that year, ending nearly thirty years at Spring Hill Mall.
The space didn't feel empty so much as wounded, like a missing wall in a room that once made sense.
A few months passed before Rouse Properties took charge, speaking of steadiness.
Yet no one could look past the hole left by that lost anchor.
Once the Joseph Spiess store pulsed with people and noise; now it was a stopover for furniture discounters and liquidation sales before fading to black again.
The long corridors followed, growing thinner, quieter, as if the air itself had lost interest.
The floors shone, the fountain gurgled on schedule, yet the draw had faded.
People still made their way to Macy's, and the few remaining stores tried to hang tight.
But the sight of so many empty windows, covered in For Lease signs, said everything.
By 2014, the mall kept up its routine, but you could tell it was running out of air.
A store closed here, another there, and then there was nothing but the sound of the air system.
A bet on entertainment to stop the slide
In 2015, new redevelopment plans surfaced for Spring Hill Mall.
They wanted to tear out part of the west end, put in restaurants, maybe some entertainment, newer shops, whatever would drag people back.
The village board looked at the drawings and nodded, trying to sound hopeful.
Then the permits came through, and everyone said the next chapter had started, though no one seemed sure what that meant.
When Brookfield acquired Rouse Properties in 2016, it inherited both the property and the local agreements that came with it.
The transition brought new funding and a clear priority: open the planned theater.
By December 15, 2016, Cinemark West Dundee and XD debuted with recliner seating and a full-service concession area.
The opening drew weekend crowds and became the first major attraction built on the site in years.
Retail leasing continued into the following spring.
H&M came in on March 23, 2017, with a sprawling two-story setup and racks of fast fashion for a younger crowd.
For a stretch, the heart of the mall buzzed again, people cutting through on their way to the theater or wandering by the dark storefronts.
Still, the real fight was happening beyond those walls, as the whole industry shifted faster than the property could adjust.
Anchors fall, ownership changes hands
The next few years brought steady loss.
Carson Pirie Scott closed in August 2018 after its parent company, Bon-Ton, went through liquidation.
The departure left one of the mall's main entrances quiet for the first time since the early 1990s.
In late 2019, Sears announced that its store would close, and by early 2020, the lights were off inside.
Macy's followed soon after, confirming another anchor shutdown that same year.
By 2021, only two major tenants remained: Kohl's and Cinemark.
Smaller stores inside the corridors had either closed or consolidated.
In July of that year, Kohan Retail Investment Group bought the mall from Brookfield, adding it to its portfolio of distressed shopping centers.
Ownership changed, but occupancy continued to drop.
In October, the long-standing Barnes & Noble shut down and shifted to Algonquin Commons.
Its corner went dark almost overnight, the hum of night shoppers gone.
The rest of the mall sagged with it.
With major anchors gone and most of the interior unlit, the property drifted in place.
Villages take ownership and clear the site
By 2023, both villages had decided to take the property into their own hands.
West Dundee bought the former Sears for $2 million, followed by the Macy's shell for $1.25 million.
Each purchase chipped away at private ownership until, in October, trustees approved a $7 million deal for the rest of the mall.
The property that once divided two towns was now shared in purpose again.
On February 22, 2024, tenants received a letter: the mall would close on March 22.
Some stores left quietly, others sold off fixtures in the final days of clearance.
West Dundee finalized its $7 million purchase in April, securing the 500,000-square-foot core.
Cinemark stayed open under a separate lease, its theater operating as demolition plans took shape around it.
Construction fences went up by June.
Village engineers began utility mapping while planners outlined timelines for full teardown.
In December 2024, trustees approved a $3.5 million demolition contract, signaling the end of Spring Hill Mall's forty-five-year structure.
When spring crossed into May 2025, the concrete started coming down, every crash of steel on stone bouncing through the hollowed-out space once alive with shoppers.
Demolition and what remains
Demolition started before sunrise most mornings.
Workers stripped aluminum panels, cut steel, and hauled loads of broken concrete away from the old concourse.
By June 2025, half the building was gone.
The roof over the food court fell next, followed by the central fountain area where children used to gather.
Dust rose above the site like fog.
Kohl's closed that April, one of the last stores to operate.
Within weeks, Carpentersville finalized its $2 million purchase of the vacant building, completing public control of the property.
West Dundee handled demolition; Carpentersville managed the adjacent parcel.
By July, officials said crews were ahead of schedule by nearly a month, with most of the interior debris cleared.
Cinemark remained open, its separate entrance untouched by the machines tearing through nearby walls.
September updates estimated 90 percent of the mall demolished, slowed only by asbestos removal at the former Sears auto center.
By early autumn, the lot looked flat, a mix of soil and concrete fragments.
What's left now are lamp posts, an active theater, and an open field ready for planning.
The story isn't finished, but the building itself is gone.