The rise and fall of Concord Mall in Elkhart, IN, and what became of the octagonal dome over its center

On August 9, 1972, the reigning Miss Indiana opened Concord Mall with an acrobatic act, on open land between Elkhart and Goshen.

An escalator carried shoppers up the two floors of Robertson's, a store with its own restaurant and beauty shop. Next door, the twin cinema showed second-run films for $1.50 a ticket until its screens went dark in 1997. The old drugstore space later became a food court.

For decades, the mall's octagonal dome covered a sunken center court ringed by planters; old tile remained underfoot, and dark wood still framed some nearby storefronts.

The enclosed mall closed for good on Saturday, October 28, 2023. So what did happen under the octagonal dome after the last stores around it were gone?

Two department stores open in Dunlap

On August 9, 1972, the reigning Miss Indiana gave an acrobatic performance to open Concord Mall, an enclosed shopping mall at 3701 S. Main Street in Elkhart, Indiana.

It stood along U.S. 33 in Dunlap, between Elkhart and Goshen, on ground that had been mostly open land two years before, and it was placed to pull shoppers from both towns and the rest of Michiana.

Two department stores faced each other from opposite ends. Montgomery Ward had about 93,000 square feet.

Robertson's, a South Bend store opening its first branch outside that city, had 100,000 square feet on two floors, with an escalator, an elevator, a beauty shop, and its own restaurant.

Between them ran a mostly one-story concourse with room for more than 50 shops, and around it all spread 35 acres of parking planned for about 4,000 cars.

The February 1970 proposal also included a 200-unit apartment complex and a large recreation building, both presented with the mall project at a hotel luncheon for Elkhart's community leaders.

Neither one arrived with the shops. What did open nearby, in March 1973, was Concord Cinema 1 & 2, a twin theater on its own lot, with two auditoriums of 300 seats each.

JCPenney arrives and Robertson's leaves

A two-story JCPenney opened at the west end in July 1976, reached through a new concourse.

It was the chain's 58th store in Indiana, and at about 140,000 square feet it was bigger than either store that had opened the mall, Robertson's included.

It brought about 250 jobs, and Concord had three department stores. Robertson's was the first of them to go.

By November 1985, the two-story space was occupied by Terre Haute-based Meis, whose departments ranged from family shoes and clothing to IBM and Apple computers.

Robertson's had announced earlier that year that it was leaving Concord for a smaller Elkhart store. The floor never sat empty between owners.

When Meis was sold to Elder-Beerman in 1989, the Concord store changed its signs once more, and the decade ended with three department stores trading at the mall: Montgomery Ward, Elder-Beerman, and JCPenney.

Storefronts empty out and the cinema shuts

Mountain AMD bought Concord in 1994 and handed management to Baird & Warner. By then close to one storefront in five stood empty.

Walmart, Meijer, and Target were arriving within a few miles, and University Park Mall in Mishawaka, open since 1979, had grown into the strongest enclosed mall in the region.

Milady's, Sycamore, and Chess King left in 1995. By the spring of 1997 occupancy had climbed back to about 91 percent, and Kravco, of King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, bought the mall. The shops kept turning over all the same.

Early in 1998, 12 or more storefronts were closed. GadZooks, Sam Goody, and Suncoast Motion Picture Company had opened; Northern Reflections followed later that year.

The cinema had become a second-run house charging $1.50 a ticket, and it closed on November 20, 1997.

A plan to tear it down for an eight-screen theater was never carried out, and neither was a 1996 deal for a first-run multiplex of eight to 12 screens on the land next door.

The empty twin building was left standing.

Montgomery Ward's building is split in three

Montgomery Ward's former building ended up with three tenants, each with its own exterior entrance. Hobby Lobby opened in about 62,000 square feet in 2002.

Pippin Dental & Braces eventually occupied the old auto-service bay, while ABC Warehouse took most of the roughly 30,000 square feet Hobby Lobby had not taken in 2003.

The breakup followed Montgomery Ward's chainwide shutdown, announced after the 2000 holiday season.

A decade after vacancy had approached one storefront in five, Concord was reporting 97 percent occupancy in 2004.

Triyar Cannon Group had bought the mall the year before and made filling empty storefronts a priority.

Osco Drug, one of the mall's first tenants, had moved out to a nearby strip center anchored by a Martin's Super Market.

In 2008 its old space in the mall reopened as The Grove, the mall's first food court, with a Subway among its tenants.

A $50 million plan, then Carson's closes

At the end opposite JCPenney, Bon-Ton gave the old Robertson's store another name in 2011, changing Elder-Beerman to Carson's.

Around the food court, the mall still looked much as it had for decades: tile on the concourses, dark wood around some storefronts, and planters in the sunken center court beneath the octagonal dome and skylight.

JCPenney, Carson's, and Hobby Lobby were supposed to survive the $50 million overhaul announced in March 2016.

Concord Towne Center would have replaced the covered mall with an open-air center, starting with new shops and restaurants; housing and entertainment were possibilities for later phases. The enclosed mall was left as it stood.

In January 2018 Bon-Ton put the Concord Carson's on its first list of 42 store closings, and the liquidation began in February.

Later that year the whole company went into liquidation, leaving no Bon-Ton name to take the store over.

The two floors that Robertson's had opened in 1972 sat empty, and one of the three anchors the plan depended on was gone.

JCPenney is spared once, then closes

In June 2020 JCPenney, then in bankruptcy, put its Concord store on a list of closings and took it off again before the month was out.

The store stayed open while the mall around it went through a failed sale. The mall had changed hands that February.

Concord Mall Properties, the Triyar-related company that owned it, sold it to a Chicago buyer, Ton Real Estate Investments X, and financed the sale itself with a $6.48 million note.

Ton defaulted, and in July 2021 a court put the mall under a receiver, Bradley Company. A sheriff sale was set for late January 2022.

Ton filed for Chapter 11 the day before it, the case was dismissed in April, and through foreclosure the mall went back to the side that had sold it.

JCPenney's reprieve ran out in under three years. In January 2023 the chain announced that the Concord store would close that spring, and the liquidation sale started in February.

When the doors shut in 2023, after almost 47 years, Concord had no department store for the first time since it opened.

The mall closes and is gutted for warehouses

In July 2023 the Elkhart Common Council took up a new plan for the roughly 82-acre site from Industrial Commercial Properties (ICP).

Light industry would take the core of the mall, commercial uses the perimeter, and apartments of three or four stories the outer reaches of the parking field.

Some nearby residents objected to industry so close to their homes. The council approved the change.

ICP bought the mall that October through Elkhart Concord LLC, and the city put $2 million toward roof repairs and asbestos removal.

The enclosed mall's last business day was Saturday, October 28, 2023, with Champs Sports, an eye-care practice, and Enzo Pizza among the last businesses open inside.

Two days later the Interurban Trolley's Orange and Red lines stopped pulling into the property and ran along the surrounding roads.

Crews stripped the inside down to the structure, taking out ceilings, storefront walls, and the awning over the main entrance, and much of the outside was painted white.

The concourse to JCPenney was demolished, leaving the old store building standing alone, and the cleared-out middle of the mall became warehouse space for Mox Warehouse & Logistics.

Sierra Forest Products signed on for the old Carson's, and by July 2024 most of the clearing was done.

Concord Business Park and the stores that stayed

The old mall is Concord Business Park now, and all but about 60,000 of its roughly 600,000 square feet is leased.

The former JCPenney is home to LEER Group, which makes pickup-truck caps and tonneau covers, after the old store was rebuilt with loading docks and drive-in doors.

In June that building and the roughly eight acres around it were sold to Vault Equity Partners, with LEER staying on as the tenant, while ICP's Elkhart Concord keeps the rest of the park.

Mox runs about 150,000 square feet of warehouse space through the old middle of the mall.

Sierra Forest Products uses the former Carson's for lumber, decorative panels, and veneer distribution; beneath Sierra's branding, the old department store remains easy to recognize.

A fresh coat of paint went onto the old Montgomery Ward section, the one part of the former mall that kept its customer-facing use.

Hobby Lobby, ABC Warehouse, and Pippin Dental & Braces each open directly to the parking lot.

Nearly $25 million has gone into remaking the property, and the jobs added and kept on the site exceed what the owner promised the city in return for its five-year tax break. The apartments have not come.

The zoning allows them on the outer parking field, and in 2024 the old cinema lot was added to the plan as a possible site for about 200 to 220 homes, but no housing has been built.

The twin cinema building still stands. Mox's warehouse now runs through the old center court, but the octagonal dome remains overhead.

In the mall's last years, tiled concourses met there around a sunken gathering place and its planters. Today the same dome looks down on stored inventory instead of shoppers.