Solomon Pond Mall's new owner plans industrial space
In December 2025, a federal district court approved the $8.5 million sale of Solomon Pond Mall, and the price covered only part of the property.
Macy's and JCPenney own their stores and some of the parking, so the buyers, affiliates of Industrial Commercial Properties (ICP), got the mall's core alone.
That two-level enclosed mall had opened in 1996 near Interstates 290 and 495 in Marlborough, Massachusetts, with part of its land in Berlin, and by 2003 it had a 15-screen cinema.
ICP came into 2026 intending to turn part of the interior over to industrial work.
Marlborough's Planning Board treated the idea as unresolved, and the city weighed whether it would cut across the redevelopment it wanted for the area.
Any redesign runs into the anchors: the owner of the core can't rework the site as one parcel while Macy's and JCPenney hold their stores and parking.
In its draft 2026 Forward Plan, the city calls for talks with the owner, the anchors, and Berlin.
In October 2026 the mall announced two women's clothing stores, Basic Store by Vanessa and Coracao Fitwear, for November.
Macy's and JCPenney are open, and Solomon Pond runs as an enclosed mall while the city's Planning Board has treated its owner's industrial idea as unresolved.
Emerald Square gets multi-use zoning around it
Three levels of stores opened in North Attleborough, Massachusetts, in 1989, when Emerald Square arrived as an enclosed mall.
By 2012 it covered just over a million square feet and had four anchors: JCPenney, Macy's, Sears, and a Macy's Home Store.
Sears later left, while the second Macy's became a men's store.
North Attleborough spent more than a year drawing up a Multi-Use Overlay for its commercial areas, and its map set Emerald Square apart in a mall district of its own, alongside districts for downtown, Kelley Boulevard, and Route 1 north and south.
In May 2026 the Town Council adopted the bylaw by a six-to-zero vote.
Inside the overlay, the bylaw lets owners seek special permits to mix stores with offices, medical offices, technology and life-science space, restaurants, industrial uses, and housing.
The vote widened what an owner can propose at the mall without approving any project there.
A redevelopment that adds housing, tears down buildings, or lays out new streets would still go before the Planning Board for a special permit and site review, with larger projects facing added traffic and stormwater review.
The mall is open, with H&M and Build-A-Bear among its tenants. Macy's and JCPenney are still department stores there.
Berkshire Mall's buyer ends its purchase contract
After a downtown Pittsfield shopping-center plan failed to go ahead, the Berkshire Mall was built in Lanesborough, Massachusetts, in 1988, with Sears, JCPenney, and Hills among its early anchors.
The enclosed mall closed in 2019. Target, which holds its own parcel, kept trading, and a Regal cinema stayed open for a time.
In May 2026 the owner, JMJ RE Holdings, agreed to sell everything except Target to Cypress Equities of Dallas.
Cypress showed its plan in public in August 2026: a retail center within the mall's existing developed area, with large-format stores, smaller buildings on outparcels, and new outdoor areas.
Two large tenants had shown interest.
The plan also depended on roads, sewers, and the Baker Hill Road District.
By October 2026 those questions had become the center of the deal, and Lanesborough asked the state to consider taking over the Routes 7 and 8 connector road and to assist with the infrastructure work.
In the last week of October 2026, Cypress terminated its purchase contract.
In early November 2026 the owner, Cypress, the town, and the area's state representative were still discussing reviving the sale if the road district questions could be settled.
No replacement center has been approved. Target is open, and the main mall building stays closed.
Kingston Collection seeks a tenant for its former Macy's site
Independence Mall opened in Kingston, Massachusetts, in 1989 and kept that name until 2014, when a reinvestment program renamed it Kingston Collection.
Its Sears closed, and part of that store's area was demolished for Alexan Kingston, 282 apartments that opened on the mall property in 2022.
The Macy's store was the other large piece of ground.
Second Horizon Capital, which bought the main mall in 2023, added the 150,000-square-foot Macy's building and its 15.2 acres in October 2024.
The town was working with the owner on new tenants by 2025, when Town Meeting authorized a land swap of about 0.84 acres so Second Horizon could put a gas station on Kingston Collection Way.
In 2026 Kingston pursued a Costco for the former Macy's site, while neighboring Plymouth backed a competing location near Route 44.
By spring the land swap was unfinished, and no development application for a Costco had been filed in Kingston.
In July 2026 the mall was still trying to bring Costco in, and Costco had announced no Kingston store.
The rest of the mall trades as usual, with Target, Newbury Comics, and Regal Cinemas open and mall events on the November calendar.
CambridgeSide gets two more years for its later buildings
CambridgeSide Galleria opened in 1990 on the Lechmere Canal in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as three floors of shops with three department-store anchors and a parking garage.
In 2017 its owner, New England Development, spent $30 million renovating the center and shortened the name to CambridgeSide.
The bigger rebuild began in the space the anchors had held.
After the mall's department-store lineup changed, Sears included, New England Development took a mixed-use plan to the Cambridge Planning Board in 2020: former anchor space and nearby parcels would become offices, laboratories, and housing, and the shops would keep trading.
The board approved the plan phase by phase, through a run of design reviews and amendments.
In February 2026 the board pushed back the deadlines for starting and finishing the later buildings by two years.
It gave the approved designs for two of them, 80 First Street and 150 CambridgeSide Place, the same two extra years.
The mall has stayed open through the work.
Shops and restaurants fill two levels, the third holds 162,000 square feet of lab and office space, and CanalSide Food + Drink is open.
Its later buildings have yet to rise.
A wholesale club is proposed for The Mall at Whitney Field
The shopping center in Leominster, Massachusetts, dates to 1967, when it began as a linear mall with three separate buildings.
It went by Searstown before it became The Mall at Whitney Field.
By 2006 it was a single-level enclosed center with Filene's, Sears, and JCPenney as anchors, and Toys "R" Us and a Sears Auto Center in buildings of their own.
Hull Property Group bought the 744,100-square-foot mall for $16 million in January 2020.
In February 2026 the company came before Leominster's Conservation Commission with a plan for most of it: tear down about 512,000 square feet and build a 275,000-square-foot store for a national wholesale club.
The commission was not voting on the redevelopment. The issue was how it should be handled under MEPA.
Hull argued for replacement-project treatment, which would avoid the longer environmental review, and commissioners wanted the company to show, point by point, why it qualified.
The mall stays open in the meantime.
Market Basket trades on an outparcel, and Santa visits are scheduled from late November to Christmas Eve.
The February session approved neither the demolition nor the club, and Costco has been publicly linked to the project.
Burlington and JCPenney still anchor the enclosed mall that the plan would mostly remove.
Arsenal Yards puts its shops up for sale
Arsenal Mall opened in 1983 in Watertown, Massachusetts, on ground that had belonged to the Watertown Arsenal.
In 2013 Boylston Properties and its partners bought the mall to build a larger district in its place.
The old mall closed for construction in 2018, though some big stores kept trading, and the first Arsenal Yards tenants arrived in 2019.
By 2022 the site held ground-floor shops and restaurants, apartments, a hotel, and lab and office buildings.
Four years later, Boylston put part of what it had built up for sale.
In early October 2026 the company confirmed that the shops and the apartments, about 257,000 square feet of retail and more than 300 units, were on offer.
The Hampton Inn & Suites and the lab and office buildings stayed out of the deal.
The shops and restaurants are open, the apartments are offered for rent, and the hotel takes guests.
Arsenal Yards remains a working mixed-use district.
The oldest of the seven opened in 1967 and the newest in 1996, and in 2026 each had a plan, a vote, a deal, or a sale offer in play.
Six still have their shops open. At Berkshire Mall the building has been shut since 2019, and Target is the only store left on the site.
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