Florence Mall, 60 percent vacant and split five ways
In 1976 Homart, the real estate company of Sears, built Florence Mall as a two-level enclosed mall beside Interstate 75 and Kentucky Route 18 in Florence, Kentucky.
After a renovation in 1994, the mall moved its food court into a bigger space in 2007 and added a 14-screen cinema, the layout shoppers found there through the 2020s.
The break came between 2020 and 2022. In March 2020 nearly 88 percent of the mall was occupied. That year its loan of roughly $90 million went into default, and in January 2021 Brookfield Properties handed the property to its lenders.
They sold it in June 2022 for $37.8 million to a buyer group that included Mason Asset Management and Namdar Realty.
By January 2025 about 45 percent of the space outside the anchors stood empty.
Four anchor buildings were on the market or about to be, Macy's two Florence stores among them.
The city hired a consultant, for up to $50,000, to study what the site could hold instead: homes, a hotel, entertainment or sports, walkable mixed-use blocks.
The vacancy kept climbing.
By June 2026 roughly 60 percent of Florence Mall was empty, while the rest of the city's retail space was less than 4 percent vacant.
Demolishing much of the mall and starting over was among the options.
Any plan of that size, though, needed the consent of every party holding the site, which by then was split into five pieces, the mall itself and four anchor properties.
Florence Mall is open, and JCPenney still trades there.
No redevelopment plan has been adopted, and no single buyer has gathered the five pieces back into one.
Greenwood Mall passes to a local owner
Greenwood Mall opened in 1979 on Scottsville Road near Interstate 65 in Bowling Green, Kentucky, a single-level mall with JCPenney as one of its first anchors.
It kept growing for 25 years: Sears came in 1987, Dillard's in 1996, a food court in 2001, and more shop space in 2004.
By 2012 no other regional mall stood within about 50 miles.
The anchors began to turn over after that.
In November 2016 Macy's announced it would close its 124,000-square-foot Greenwood store, which had 61 workers, in spring 2017.
Belk replaced it and opened in October 2017. In October 2018 Sears announced that its Bowling Green store would close.
By the 2020s a cinema, a Chuck E. Cheese, and arcade games next to the food court made the mall a place to play as well as to buy clothes.
The ownership was less steady.
General Growth Properties carried $63 million of debt on Greenwood, with about $57.5 million due at maturity, and in July 2022 that balance came due without being paid off.
The deed passed to Greenwood Mall Realty Holding LLC in August 2022, and by January 2023 the owner was Kohan Retail Investment Group.
By mid-2025 the mall was in receivership, and Centennial took over its management and leasing in June 2025.
Two events came close together in the fall of 2026.
At the end of October, Greenwood Mall Realty Holding LLC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
In the first week of November 2026, a new local owner was announced for the mall, with Spinoso Real Estate Group taking over management, leasing, and daily operations.
Spinoso now manages Greenwood Mall for its local owner, and the mall stays open.
Jefferson Mall goes into receivership
Richard E. Jacobs Group built Jefferson Mall as a one-level enclosed mall near Interstate 65 and the Outer Loop in southern Louisville, Kentucky.
CBL bought it in 2001 for about $53 million and finished a $21 million renovation in 2003.
The big boxes that department stores left behind found new uses.
Macy's closed its Jefferson Mall store by the end of March 2017, taking more than 50 jobs with it, and the building went to entertainment.
When one operator, Round1, closed there in April 2024, Tilted 10 opened in the same space that July with 10 bowling lanes, two 18-hole blacklight mini-golf courses, bumper cars, and over 100 arcade and virtual-reality machines, plus a restaurant and bar.
Demolition of the old two-level Sears building began in March 2024 to make room for BJ's Wholesale Club, a membership warehouse in a new building of its own.
By the end of 2025 BJ's, Dillard's, JCPenney, H&M, Ross Dress for Less, and Tilted 10 filled the large spaces, and about 86 percent of the mall's in-line space was leased.
In January 2026 the lender notified CBL that the $48.6 million loan on Jefferson Mall was in default.
In February 2026 the mall went into receivership as part of a foreclosure.
CBL lost control of the property and agreed to work with the lender to complete the foreclosure.
Jefferson Mall remains in receivership, and the foreclosure is still underway, so no new owner holds it yet.
The mall keeps operating in the meantime, its stores and anchors open.
Mid City Mall sold to make way for Publix
Mid City Mall went up as an enclosed mall at 1250 Bardstown Road in Louisville's Highlands, on ground where the German Protestant Orphans Home had opened in 1902.
Over the decades the building filled with what a neighborhood uses: a grocery, a cinema, a branch library, a comedy club, a thrift shop, and bars.
The Metts family owned it for about four decades.
Baxter Avenue Theatres, which had shown films there since 1996, closed on December 31, 2025.
In January 2026 Branch Properties and the Metts family laid out Mid City Market, an open-air center built around a Publix, with more green space and more than 100 fewer parking spaces.
The old mall was to come down by the end of 2026 and the new center to open in early 2028.
In March 2026 the neighborhood's overlay review committee held the project back and asked for a safer path for people walking in from Bardstown Road, a mural on the Baxter Avenue side of the supermarket, and more red brick.
With those changes in place, the committee approved it 4-1 in April 2026.
The long-running tenants left that summer. ValuMarket held a closing sale and shut on June 30, 2026, after 21 years.
By the end of August 2026 the Highlands-Shelby Park library branch had shut too, more than 32 years after it moved in.
Publix signed for a 54,900-square-foot supermarket and a 3,200-square-foot Publix Liquors next to it, and at the end of October 2026 Branch Properties, based in Atlanta, bought the nearly 12-acre site, with the Metts family keeping a stake.
The old building now waits for demolition, and no start date has been set.
The library is expected back in a new building on the Beechwood Avenue side, and Mid City Market is due in 2028.
Towne Mall turned inside out as City Center
Towne Mall opened in 1985 at North Dixie Highway and Ring Road in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, a one-story enclosed mall where most small stores faced an inside corridor.
Macerich bought it in 2005. At the end of 2007 JCPenney, Belk, and Sears anchored the mall, and about 91 percent of its space was leased.
Sears had left by 2019, when the leased share was down to about 78 percent.
The loan on Towne Mall matured in November 2022 without being repaid, and the property went to a receiver.
In December 2023 the receiver sold it for $9.5 million to a local owner, who started construction almost at once.
By June 2024 the plan was a phased rebuild of the roughly 420,000-square-foot complex for $10 million to $12 million, to be finished around December 2026.
Crews stripped the old Sears building to its frame, replaced roofs and facades, tore out central sections of the corridor, and cut doors into stores that had only opened onto the inside.
New tenants arrived as the walls came down.
Sierra opened in September 2026, JD Sports was trading by October, and HomeGoods opened on October 22, 2026.
Blue City Center signs went up on the property, and by late October 2026 every store had its own entrance from outside.
Between Visionworks and Bath & Body Works, a fountain with stepped levels, lights, music, and brass horse figures took shape.
City Center is an open-air shopping center now.
Belk and JCPenney remain, and American Eagle and Bath & Body Works carried over from the mall.
Buckle, fitted into two storefronts near them, is set to open on November 9, and the fountain is still being finished, its water not yet turned on.
Maui's theme park fills the old Towne Square Mall
Towne Square Mall was the enclosed mall on Frederica Street in Owensboro, Kentucky, with its Macy's building owned separately.
In December 2019 a local group, TSM Holdings, bought the rest of the mall for $5.15 million.
Macy's closed in early 2020, and in February 2022 TSM bought that building too, for nearly $2 million.
A new anchor looked set soon after.
In March 2022 Ellis Entertainment leased 62,000 square feet of the empty JCPenney for a racing and wagering venue planned to open in early 2023.
Ellis Park's owner, Churchill Downs, canceled it in May 2023.
The owners then announced that the enclosed mall would close, and on September 5, 2023 it did, with about 10 tenants left.
At the end of September 2023 the fixtures were sold off: Christmas decorations, kiosks, mannequins, clothing racks.
The giant stuffed bear and the Santa chair from the mall's holiday program went to the Owensboro-Daviess County Christmas Parade Association.
The property took the name Towne Square Center, and parts of it were rezoned for light industry.
Most of the old mall core went to entertainment. Owensboro approved a $1.5 million incentive for a family entertainment center in May 2025.
First promoted as Malibu Jack's, the project became Maui's Indoor Theme Park in January 2026.
Construction kept the old circulation: the main mall entrance became the park's entrance, and some storefronts were opened into larger rooms while others were walled over.
Maui's opened on May 8, 2026.
Maui's and Planet Fitness operate on the property, and the former anchor space is still being reused piece by piece.
The bear and the Santa chair left the building in 2023.
Visitors now come in through the same Frederica Street entrance and walk the old central hallway to an indoor theme park.
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