Glenbrook Square loses Sears and keeps its corridors
Sears was there from the first day. When the Glenbrook Center opened on Coldwater Road in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1966, it was an enclosed shopping center on the city's north side, with Sears and L.S. Ayres as its department stores.
By the early 1980s, after expansions in 1976 and 1981, Hudson's and JCPenney had joined Sears and L.S. Ayres, and the mall had an indoor skating rink.
By 2015 Glenbrook was a regional mall of about 1.2 million square feet, with a carousel turning in its food court since 2006.
In 2018 it lost two department stores.
Carson's closed when its parent, Bon-Ton, was liquidated, and Sears shut its Glenbrook store that same year.
The Sears building was torn down in 2019.
An early plan to put a Dave & Buster's and a HomeGoods on the cleared land did not materialize as scheduled, and the ground took another form: the Glenbrook Square Collection, an open-air row of shops leased separately from the mall beside it.
HomeGoods ended up there after all, next to Bob's Discount Furniture.
The enclosed mall changed hands as well.
Spinoso Real Estate Group took over management in 2022 while the mall was in receivership, and Hull Property Group bought it in August 2025 and announced that it would work with the community on the mall's future.
Its two levels of indoor shops are open under the new owner, with Macy's as an anchor. JCPenney still trades inside.
Jefferson Pointe builds a main street of its own
The first phase of Jefferson Pointe opened in August 2001 on West Jefferson Boulevard in Fort Wayne, Indiana, with no roof over any of it.
It was an open-air lifestyle center on the city's west side, where outdoor walks connected the shops, the restaurants, a movie theater, and a two-story Von Maur.
By 2015 the whole district covered about 650,000 square feet.
Von Maur held its building under its own ownership, and when a large part of the center was sold in 2018, the department store's building stayed out of the deal.
In 2019 RED Development began a multimillion-dollar redesign built around a new street inside the center.
It was laid out to run from the area near the theater to the fountain in front of Von Maur, with new lighting, landscaping, and signs along the way.
The road had public money behind it: the Fort Wayne Redevelopment Commission agreed to pay back up to $3.5 million of its cost.
The work was aimed at mid-2020, and by 2021 the interior street and a roundabout were in place.
The restaurants along those walks kept changing after the street went in. Pita Way opened in March 2024 in a space Chipotle had held.
First Watch came in January 2025, on the Illinois Road side, in a building another restaurant had left.
In October 2026 the region's first Kura Revolving Sushi Bar was announced for Jefferson Pointe.
More than 60 shops and restaurants already trade along its outdoor streets.
Apple Glen Crossing changes owners around its big boxes
The Walmart and the Kohl's at Apple Glen Crossing were never part of the property.
The center was built in 2000 on Apple Glen Boulevard, near Illinois Road in Fort Wayne, Indiana, as an outdoor power center right beside Jefferson Pointe, about 3.7 miles west of downtown.
Its own buildings held large chain stores such as Best Buy and Dick's Sporting Goods, while Walmart and Kohl's stood next door as shadow anchors, big neighbors that brought shoppers to the area.
Shoppers move through the stretch along Illinois Road as one shopping district, but Apple Glen is a separate property with owners of its own.
When Brixmor Property Group sold the center to Berengaria Development, the real estate arm of Marcus Investments, in December 2021, the deal covered about 150,000 square feet: the stores in the center's own buildings.
In June 2026 Apple Glen changed hands again, this time through an equity transfer.
It left the center wholly owned by a joint venture of Marquee Capital and Belay Investment Group, and the two companies announced the deal that July.
By then the tenant list had widened past electronics and sporting goods, with Bricks & Minifigs and Warhammer bringing hobby shopping to the center.
Best Buy and Dick's Sporting Goods, the large stores the center was sold with in 2021, still anchor it under its new owners.
Covington Plaza sells for $23.2 million
Covington Plaza went up in 1978 on West Jefferson Boulevard in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on the city's west side.
The two big centers nearby came along much later, Apple Glen Crossing in 2000 with its electronics and sporting-goods stores, and Jefferson Pointe in 2001 with its department store and cinema.
Covington Plaza sits farther out the boulevard than Jefferson Pointe.
Its storefronts, which run from 6306 to 6410 West Jefferson Boulevard, were renovated in 2007.
Broad Reach Retail Partners owned the property for more than a decade before selling it in the late summer of 2025.
The buyer was Ziff Real Estate Partners, a South Carolina investment firm, and it paid $23.2 million for a plaza that was 47 years old.
When the deal was announced that September, Ziff also announced plans to improve the center's appearance and its buildings.
The plaza works as a neighborhood center, the kind of place people use for the errands of an ordinary week.
The Fresh Market is its grocery anchor.
Planet Fitness, The Woodhouse Day Spa, and Tequila Mexican Cantina share the center with it, along with an office-supply store, a pet-supply store, a menswear shop, and a grill.
One stop can cover groceries, a workout, a spa appointment, and dinner.
The plaza belongs to Ziff now, its first new owner in more than a decade.
Chapel Ridge leases its old Marshalls store
Fort Wayne's northeast side grew toward Interstate 469, and Chapel Ridge Shopping Center went up where Maysville Road meets that highway, near a Menards and a Meijer.
Built around 2005 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, it was a power center laid out for driving: big stores standing apart from one another, with strip buildings and smaller retail pads spread around the parking, reached from both the interstate and Maysville Road.
By 2015 it counted as one of the community shopping centers serving the northeast side, with a core of about 108,500 square feet.
Marshalls was one of the first tenants.
It took a building of about 35,000 square feet at 10550 Maysville Road when the center was built and stayed in it until 2017.
After Marshalls left, the building went on the market, and by 2018 it was being offered for lease as one large space, a big box waiting in a center built out of big boxes.
The box found its next tenant in auto parts.
By the spring of 2025, O'Reilly Auto Parts had leased the old Marshalls building, and the building Marshalls had held from the start had a tenant's name on it again.
Several of its smaller suites are offered for lease.
Walmart, Kohl's, and Michaels trade among the separate big stores near I-469, in the spread-out shape the center was built with.
Southtown Mall comes down for Walmart and Menards
Southtown Mall reached about a million square feet in 1982, when an expansion brought Sears and Service Merchandise to the south side's enclosed mall.
Melvin Simon & Associates had developed it, and it opened in 1969 near Lafayette Street and Tillman Road in Fort Wayne, Indiana, with Wolf & Dessauer and Montgomery Ward among its first department stores.
JCPenney joined later. By the 1990s the anchors were leaving.
In February 2003 the remaining stores learned that their leases would end and the mall would close, and it closed that year.
The city of Fort Wayne filed in October 2003 to take the property by eminent domain and acquired the site, and demolition began in August 2004.
New streets, utility lines, and building pads went in where the corridors had been.
Menards opened in 2006, and Walmart was trading beside it by 2007, on a development that went by the names Southtown Centre and Southtown Crossing.
The two big stores put working retail back on the land, but few smaller buildings followed them: by 2015 only a handful of outparcels had been added since Walmart opened, and by 2020 the south side still had fewer restaurants and specialty shops than it had when the mall was at its peak.
Part of the remaining land now holds the LegacyOne Real Estate offices, and Culver's held its grand opening at Southtown Crossing on September 28, 2026.
Two outlots on the old mall ground are still offered for development.
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