Mounds Mall rises on South Scatterfield Road
On Anderson's south side, at South Scatterfield Road and Mounds Road, the site started as a landfill. Groundbreaking on December 30, 1963, turned it into a construction site for a new enclosed shopping center built over the former dump.
Melvin Simon & Associates developed the project. By May 1964, it carried a name: Mounds Mall. The first major openings came before the full complex was finished.
On November 12, 1964, two anchor stores opened at the same time - a two-story Montgomery Ward of about 87,000 square feet and a one-story H.P. Wasson & Co. store of about 53,000 square feet.
In the first weeks, new entrances led into a lit interior as shoppers began using the space.
The rest of the mall continued to open behind the anchors.
From late 1964 into 1965, additional sections came online, the center filled out, and the interior began to function like a finished indoor street instead of an active work site.
1964-65 openings, sunken court, first shops
More stores opened one after another. Kroger opened a 15,600 square foot grocery store in March 1965, bringing steady daily visitors to the mall, not just on weekends.
In April 1965, F.W. Woolworth opened an 18,000 square foot discount store, designed for both quick shopping and taking your time.
Mounds Mall marked its grand opening on May 2, 1965, with a sunken garden center court and 23 shops. The court was a pause in the center, with the walkways and shops going around it in a simple circle.
Early inline tenants included Zales Jewelers, Jo-Ann Fabrics, SupeRx Drugs, and Roselyn's Bakery, with other small stores filling out the corridors and completing the basic mix.
Over the following decades, the center grew to about 300,000 square feet. It became Anderson's primary shopping destination, learned the same way most malls are learned: parking lot, entrance, loop, and back again.
JCPenney arrives, then movies light the lot
On January 2, 1969, a two-level JCPenney opened at about 134,000 square feet.
With Penney joining Montgomery Ward and H.P. Wasson, the mall now had three department store anchors, and the walk from one end to the other had a clearer point.
The site picked up a second life at night soon after. On December 25, 1970, an outparcel theater opened as Mounds Cinema under Cinecom Theatres.
Four years later, on August 16, 1974, a second cinema opened as General Cinema Mounds Mall 1 & 2.
The theaters were outside the indoor mall, but they shared the same parking lots and traffic flow as the stores.
By the mid-1970s, Mounds Mall had taken on the shape it would keep for years: large department stores at each end, smaller stores in the middle, and movie theaters close by to keep the mall busy after the stores closed.
Wasson to Meis, Sears takes Ward's space
Anchor changes began in 1981. H.P. Wasson closed in January, taking one of the original department store names off the building.
The space was refilled that same year. In August 1981, it reopened as Meis, a Terre Haute-based chain, keeping the anchor slot in use while the branding changed.
Another original anchor turned over in 1983. Montgomery Ward closed, and Sears replaced it in the former Ward space, keeping a major department store in that location even as the name on the doors shifted.
The interior was updated in the middle of the decade.
In 1986, a renovation removed the original sunken garden center court and replaced it with a food court, swapping the landscaped center for seating and fast-food service lines.
The former Wasson space changed again on August 13, 1989, when Meis was rebranded as Elder-Beerman.
By then, the same anchor box had carried three identities - Wasson, Meis, and Elder-Beerman - as the mall moved toward the 1990s.
Food court era, then the JCPenney site becomes Mounds 10
In October 1995, Sears rededicated its Anderson store after an expansion and remodel, bringing it to about 109,000 square feet.
By the mid-1990s, the anchor lineup was Sears, Elder-Beerman, and JCPenney, a steady roster after a run of name changes.
In the next era, national chains started pulling out, and empty spaces took longer to refill. On April 28, 2001, JCPenney closed. The building was demolished rather than left standing empty.
On April 16, 2004, a Kerasotes Mounds 10 movie theater opened on the former Penney site, shifting that end of the property from a department store to a multiplex.
By the early 2000s, Kroger's former space had become an Elder-Beerman Home Store.
In January 2003, Simon Property Group sold Mounds Mall to Bayview Financial of Coral Gables, Florida.
Bayview renovated the mall by adding skylights and updating the food court, and it briefly used the name "Mounds Mall of Anderson."
Carson's takes over, Sears leaves, 2018 shutdown
Bayview's refresh did not stop the long slide in tenant demand, and the next ownership change came from closer to home.
In September 2009, the mall was sold to local owners, siblings Virgil E. Cook II and Natalie Campbell.
The Cook family already owned the land under the mall, and an entity tied to them, Elda Corp., managed the property.
Anchor changes kept coming. On August 14, 2011, the Elder-Beerman stores, including the women's and home operations, were converted to Carson's under Bon-Ton ownership.
Sears then shut its Anderson store on April 29, 2012, leaving Carson's as the only major department store attached to the enclosed mall.
In late January 2018, Bon-Ton announced it would close Carson's stores in Indiana. The Anderson Carson's ran liquidation sales through spring.
With that final anchor going away, operating a roughly 300,000 square foot enclosed center stopped making sense.
On March 1, 2018, the Cook family announced that Mounds Mall would close permanently, effective April 1, 2018, citing the loss of Carson's as the last straw.
More than $434,000 in back taxes were owed on the property when the mall closed.
After the mall itself shut down, two standalone businesses with outside entrances - the Mounds 10 Theater and an optometrist's office - remained open.
Split owners, lawsuits, and a March 2026 tax sale
In July 2018, the Cook family listed the property at $3.0 million.
County records showed about $655,000 in delinquent taxes on the mall building, while the land's taxes were current, and an April 2018 tax certificate sale failed to produce a buyer.
Tenants left, the theater closed by late 2019, and by 2021, the 32-acre site was boarded up and empty.
In October 2019, Florida businessman Mark Squillante bought the mall building for $12,000, while the Cook family kept the land after paying about $301,000 in back taxes on it.
Squillante checked the roof and HVAC, offered rent incentives, and talked about converting the center into an event and entertainment complex that could take up to $10 million.
He had invested about $350,000 by 2021 and hoped to reopen by 2023, using rent abatements to lure local entrepreneurs and treating the project as legacy work.
Legal disputes continued over theater property and parking lot rights. As of 2023 and the following years, the mall has not reopened.
The next Madison County Commissioners' Certificate Sale is scheduled for March 9, 2026, at the Millcreek Civic Center in Chesterfield.
The property list includes entries tied to the former Mounds Mall site, including the old mall building at 2109 S Scatterfield Rd and a parking lot entry linked to the old mall at 0 S Scatterfield Rd.
The notice also allows for the sale to be moved to an online format at the local officials' discretion.
