North Grand Mall in Ames, IA Is the Only Enclosed Mall the City Ever Built, and It's Still Open in 2026

Ames, Iowa has one enclosed shopping mall. It's at 2801 Grand Avenue; it opened on November 3, 1971, and in July 2026 it's still open for business.

North Grand Mall started with J.C. Penney, Younkers, and Sears strung along a single one-level corridor, and it never got a second floor or a second wing. What it got instead was five decades of things being removed and replaced.

Sears closed in 2007 while the mall was chasing a much larger outdoor expansion that never materialized. The former Sears area wasn't remade until 2012.

Kohl's, TJ Maxx and Shoe Carnival opened around the former Sears site in March 2013, all facing the parking lot.

The mall was put up for a sheriff's auction in 2015 and went to local buyers in 2016. Younkers closed in 2018 and its building now holds a Planet Fitness and a Dunham's Sports.

JCPenney is the last original anchor. About 23,900 vehicles pass on Grand Avenue every day, and roughly 45 businesses are still open inside and around the building.

The story of how it got here starts on a farm field.

The farm field that became North Grand Mall

By the late 1950s, the ground north of 24th Street in Ames was still farmland. Houses were already pushing toward it, and businesses began gathering at 24th and Grand.

The paperwork came first. In 1968 Grand Center, Ltd. signed a 99-year ground lease on the site.

One party owned the land, another would build on it and pay rent. That arrangement lasted three decades and ended up in federal court.

North Grand Mall was dedicated on November 3, 1971: a one-level enclosed shopping mall at 2801 Grand Avenue, on the road that carries U.S.

Highway 69 through Ames, with three department stores holding it up. J.C. Penney, Younkers, and Sears.

The plan was one long corridor. Penney at the north end, Sears at the south, Younkers opening onto the middle instead of off a wing of its own.

Small shops filled the stretch between them, with surface parking spread around the building.

J.C. Penney came from downtown. Its old Main Street building sat empty for several years. In 1976, the east half was cut into smaller shops.

Three anchors and a five-screen theater

Three anchors, no changes, for more than 30 years.

Sears sold appliances, tools, home goods and clothing, and ran an automotive shop. Penney and Younkers already had Ames customers before the mall existed.

Where those three stores sat decided how everybody moved through the building, from the parking fields to the corridor and back.

The smaller stores turned over the way mall stores do. Seifert's and Fox Jewelry were among them.

There was never a real food court; restaurants were scattered through the building and out on the neighboring lots.

By 1998 the mall measured 351,000 square feet, and every available space in it was leased.

The five-screen theater arrived in the middle of that stretch.

North Grand 5 opened on June 13, 1996, picking up some of what the Ranch Drive-In left behind when it closed after the 1995 season and its land went to other development.

Central States Theatres ran it first, then sold it and the Varsity Theatre to Cinemark in the fall of 1999.

Who owned the ground under the mall?

The mall changed hands repeatedly. In 1980 it went into a ten-mall package sold out of the General Growth interests for $91 million.

Aetna Life Insurance took the interests, and the Rouse Company managed the property.

In August 1998 a Chicago firm, Landau & Heyman, bought North Grand and four other Iowa malls.

The mall interest itself had been bought that June for $20 million, with 69 years still to run on the 1968 lease.

Then came the fight over the dirt.

North Grand moved to buy the land underneath it.

The lease set the price by a formula, average rent divided by 7 percent, and the two sides read it differently. $129,400 sat in escrow while the lawyers argued.

A district court sided with the landowner. On January 30, 2002 the Eighth Circuit reversed it. North Grand already owned the ground, and the ruling settled who got the $129,400.

In December 2004, GK Development of Barrington, Illinois bought North Grand and three other Iowa malls for $117 million. The public reports didn't break out what Ames alone cost.

The Streets of North Grand that never got built

GK arrived with a plan to turn the south end into an outdoor shopping district. It had a name before it had tenants: the Streets of North Grand.

Roughly $30 million, about 150,000 square feet of open-air retail, and a finished property of 480,815 square feet.

Ames approved the preliminary plat and reuse plan on March 27, 2007, with conditions a neighbor would notice: colored concrete at parking-lot entrances and crossings, screening for the apartments south of the mall, trees at 30-foot spacing.

Then the clearing started. Okoboji Bar & Grill, Wells Fargo, Ames Back and Neck Care, and several smaller businesses sat inside the demolition area.

Valentino's moved to Wheeler Street, Grand Cleaners to Stange Road, and Bierl Carpet One left in May 2007 for reasons of its own.

Sears ran a going-out-of-business sale and closed on July 31, 2007, after 36 years at the south end of the corridor. The building stayed empty for years.

The plan had a problem it could not get around. GK needed signed commitments from large retailers before it could finance construction, and the commitments never came.

Then the downturn stopped many retailers from expanding. Ames got the demolition. The lifestyle center never followed.

Four years of cleared land and extensions

A cleared lot on Grand Avenue is hard to ignore, and Ames didn't ignore it.

The city extended the site-work deadline in July 2008, July 2009, July 2010 and again in January 2011, while holding a bond of $480,000 against work that should have been finished by then: parking aisles, traffic islands, lighting.

Council members and residents said publicly that they were frustrated with the vacant land and unfinished site work.

By July 2010 GK conceded the outdoor center wasn't going to be built the way it had been drawn. It would fill space already inside the mall instead and keep rents low.

It still hoped to sign two key retailers and start in spring 2011, so Ames granted another six months.

The plat left a mess on paper too.

It split the site into four lots, and the mall's own parking ended up technically nonconforming, because the spaces people parked in now sat on a different lot than the building they were walking into.

Walgreens was the only finished piece of the entire plan.

The stores that opened facing the parking lot

The second attempt cost a fraction of the first and got built.

Ames approved a revised plan on January 10, 2012, budgeted at $8 million and centered on the old Sears ground and nearby buildings: five stores, two possible restaurants, rebuilt parking, and a retail building of about 58,000 square feet.

Kohl's opened on March 3, 2013. TJ Maxx opened on March 6. Shoe Carnival held its grand opening on March 16. Gap Outlet came in behind them.

All four had doors facing the parking lot. Kohl's went up south of the old Sears building, at close to department-store size, and a shopper walking the enclosed corridor never went past it.

The equity came from private investors. Grand Center Partners raised $2.4 million in 2012 and sold the whole southern package in November 2013, paying out $3.2 million.

From then on the south side and the enclosed mall had different owners.

The theater went next. Cinemark closed North Grand 5 on April 19, 2014, and the building spent more than three years without a working cinema.

Default, a sheriff's sale, and local buyers

The trouble was on the enclosed mall, and it had been sitting there since 2007. Two mortgages were taken out that May, $32 million and $1.9 million. By 2015 the obligations had passed $37 million.

The borrower stopped paying in July 2014. Default notices went out in August, September and November.

A foreclosure petition was filed in Story County District Court on December 15, 2014, and by April 2015 the judgment tied to the planned sale stood at $32.8 million.

The mall was scheduled for a sheriff's auction on June 9, 2015.

Through all of it the doors opened every morning. A temporary manager took over, and tenants were notified of the change. Flame & Skewer, in the building since the mall's opening period, kept serving.

The foreclosure didn't reach the 2013 stores, which sat in a separate development.

On December 1, 2016 a local investment group finished buying the enclosed mall. The purchase price wasn't disclosed.

The new owners intended to steady the building, recruit tenants, and keep it in local hands. RockStep Capital handles leasing and management.

What's left, and who still shows up

The theater came back first. An independent operator renovated it and reopened in December 2017 as North Grand Cinema, with power recliners, reserved seating, and beer and wine service.

Then the mall lost Younkers. Bon-Ton went into liquidation in 2018 and closed the chain, and the Ames store went with it after 47 years in the same spot.

J.C. Penney became the last of the three original anchors, and it's still up at the north end.

The Younkers box got divided rather than left dark. Planet Fitness took part of it; Dunham's Sports opened in another large section on October 4, 2024.

In December 2025 the city approved turning the old brick U.S. Bank building at 2615 Grand Avenue into a KFC with a drive-through. Six parking spaces go; 1,720 remain.

On May 21, 2026, black smoke came up over the roof around 4 p.m. The fire was in the hood exhaust at Flame & Skewer. The mall was evacuated and nobody was hurt.

North Grand runs about 43 businesses now, and the list looks nothing like 1971: axe throwing, indoor golf, a record store, a tuxedo shop, an Indoor Farmers' Market, a drive-through Starbucks in front of Penney.

Hours are 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and mall walkers are let in before the stores open.

Iowa State's calendar still moves the traffic, from student arrivals to football weekends. In November the building turns 55, and Ames still has one enclosed mall.