Standing on John F. Kennedy Road on the west side of Dubuque, Iowa, sits an enclosed shopping mall of about 700,000 square feet.
Kennedy Mall opened on April 15, 1970 with about 60 stores, billed as the largest enclosed mall in the state. Younkers and Montgomery Ward were already trading on the site, and Roshek's joined that fall.
They all left eventually. Montgomery Ward closed in 1983 and Sears in 2014. Younkers went last, in 2018, taking about 90 Dubuque jobs with it.
JCPenney is the only department store left, in the old Ward building. Marshalls opened in nearly 24,000 square feet of the former Younkers space in August 2026, and Cafaro is still leasing out the remaining space.
Montgomery Ward left downtown first
In 1964, Montgomery Ward announced it was leaving its downtown Dubuque store for the west side.
No enclosed mall existed yet. The plan pointed to a hillside on the edge of town, where the new store would go.
Rezoning came through in February 1966.
William M. Cafaro and Associates, a Youngstown, Ohio developer that had opened its first enclosed mall the year before, took the site at what is now 555 John F. Kennedy Road.
The stores arrived before the mall did. Younkers opened in the fall of 1968.
Montgomery Ward followed in the spring of 1969 with 133,000 square feet, its largest store in Iowa.
The enclosed corridor was built between and around them.
Kennedy Mall opened with 60 stores in 1970
Kennedy Mall formally opened on April 15, 1970, an enclosed shopping center on Dubuque's west side holding about 60 stores.
It was billed as the largest enclosed mall in Iowa and promoted as the first in the state with climate control.
F. W. Woolworth ran the junior anchor, with a Harvest House restaurant inside it.
Roshek's arrived that fall, out of the landmark downtown building the family name had been attached to for decades.
Eight businesses had left downtown for the mall or committed to leaving.
Bishop's Buffet opened with the mall and stayed decades. Musicland lasted until 2006.
A General Cinema auditorium sat inside the concourse near Roshek's, one room with 795 seats, divided into two screens of roughly 300 each in 1972.
The anchors traded places, 1982 to 1994
Roshek's closed in 1982, 12 years after it moved in. Armstrong Department Stores of Cedar Rapids took over the operation and the building.
Montgomery Ward closed in May 1983, and JCPenney moved up from downtown into the empty Ward box.
Sears came in from south Dubuque in the late 1980s and took the southern portion of the old Roshek's and Armstrong's building.
Armstrong's held the northern half until it closed for good in January 1991.
The Dubuque store had been profitable; the Cedar Rapids parent collapsed anyway.
Younkers West opened in the northern remainder on October 5, 1993, with an added escalator and the men's, children's, and home departments, while the original store kept women's apparel.
That made Dubuque one of Younkers' largest operations outside Des Moines. Woolworth closed the next year.
The mall turned itself outward
General Cinema gave up on the interior theater in the 1980s and built a six-screen replacement in the west parking lot.
The late-1980s renovation added a food court at the northeast corner. It didn't last.
The corner was demolished and rebuilt for Borders, which took the old Sam Goody space too and faced the parking lot.
Best Buy went up on overflow parking. Dick's Sporting Goods and Texas Roadhouse later took mall land too.
Each gave shoppers a reason to park, walk in, and skip the concourse.
Carmike ran the six screens into the 2000s.
The mall's theater dropped to second-run films as newer screens opened elsewhere in Dubuque, and Carmike closed it in May 2007 rather than renew the lease.
The fountain came out for floor space
That April, Cafaro announced a two-phase renovation, the first phase estimated at $2.9 million.
Crews replaced flooring and entrances, cut in skylights, and reworked the east side so more stores could face Wacker Drive.
The center fountain had been dry for years. It came out, and the floor it occupied became leasable space. A children's play area opened by June 2008.
Borders liquidated in 2011, and Books-A-Million took the bookstore role later that year.
Through all of it the property never changed hands.
It skipped the lender takeovers and distressed sales that moved other malls of its age between owners. The Cafaro family built it and still runs it.
When Sears and Younkers both left
Sears announced its closure in January 2014 and shut that spring, leaving a two-level box.
Cafaro started filling the old Sears space with other uses. Planet Fitness opened in 2015.
Vertical Jump Park moved into the old Sears space in 2016, the same year Gap, GapKids, and babyGap closed.
Phoenix Theatres took over the six-screen building in 2018 and put in reclining seats.
Younkers went down in Bon-Ton's liquidation that same year, ending a run that had started in 1968, before the mall around it existed.
About 90 Dubuque employees lost their jobs.
The north end was the harder problem. The women's store alone ran about 70,000 square feet, and nothing permanent replaced it for five years.
In 2021 that floor became a mass COVID-19 vaccination site. JCPenney had just come out of its own bankruptcy and remained at the mall.
Kennedy Mall in 2026: down to one department store
The Younkers shell got cut into pieces instead.
Books-A-Million moved into 12,200 square feet of it in August 2023, the first permanent retailer to return there.
HomeGoods opened in May 2024 in 24,200 square feet assembled from the bookstore's old spot and the storefronts beside it, with parking-lot entrances of their own.
World Earth Minerals Superstore took another portion in November 2024 and closed in May 2026.
Marshalls opened on August 13, 2026 in nearly 24,000 square feet next to Books-A-Million.
In June 2024 the city cut the mall's parking requirement by 17 percent and removed the cap on leasable floor area, letting Cafaro build on pavement it no longer needs.
The complex is still about 700,000 square feet, and JCPenney is the last department store.
Spartans has sold sports memorabilia in Center Court since January 2026, PositiviTea took the long-vacant Sbarro space in February, and the public library runs a Reading Corner inside.
The mall's common areas are on the city's list of warming and cooling centers.
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