Inside Courtland Center Mall’s Struggle: Burton, MI’s Forgotten Shopping Hub

Back When Eastland Meant Everything

In Burton, Michigan, long before Courtland Center got its current name, Eastland Mall filled a particular kind of local space.

Flint already had its industrial backbone, but this place added a polished hallway of stores, fluorescent lights, and seasonal window displays that helped anchor suburban life.

A mall like this didn’t need to be flashy to matter. For a while, it simply was. The old Eastland sign marked more than an entrance—it hinted at what counted as things to do in Flint, MI, in 1968.

Rezoning to Ribbon Cutting – Commercial Launch (1964–1968)

In September 1964, the Burton Township board rezoned a patch of land at the southeast corner of East Court Street and Center Road.

Up to that point, it had been marked for single-family homes.

Rezoning shifted it to commercial, making it eligible for mall development.

Forest City Enterprises moved quickly after the approval, beginning construction with a plan to open in mid-1965.

Delays pushed the timeline, but the site’s conversion from quiet housing potential to enclosed retail square footage was set in motion.

By late October 1968, the site opened as Eastland Mall.

It featured 47 stores, a 1,000-seat movie theater, and three anchor tenants: Woolco to the east, The Fair to the west, and Detroit-based Federal’s in the center.

The mall opened during an era when enclosed shopping centers were still novel for the region.

Genesee Valley Center, which would later draw more traffic, opened two years later in 1970.

Federal’s later closed and was temporarily replaced by Robert Hall Village.

That lasted until 1977, when the space went dark again due to bankruptcy.

JCPenney moved into that same spot afterward. Meanwhile, Woolco would hold out until 1983, when it closed all U.S. locations.

What had once been three cornerstones of the original floor plan were already rotating out just fifteen years after the opening.

The mall, still under the Eastland name, was holding together but already evolving under pressure from inside and out.

Branding Shift and Anchor Realignment (1986–1999)

The name change landed first. In August 1986, Eastland Mall officially became Courtland Center.

The rebranding matched a push to reposition the property as a retail fixture in Burton rather than a Flint offshoot.

A year later, one of the original anchors disappeared—The Fair closed in 1987.

It’s a spot turned into a Mervyn’s.

That swap aligned with Mervyn’s expansion into Michigan markets during the late 1980s, though the move wouldn’t last forever.

Meanwhile, the former Woolco wing, which had been vacant since 1983, was sliced and leased to Crowley’s department store along with smaller in-line retailers.

The patchwork of spaces followed a clear trend: fewer monolithic anchors, more fragmented leases.

That gave mall management some flexibility, but also suggested hesitancy among large national tenants.

By 1994, the mall counted about 80 stores. That included chains, local names, and a few seasonal setups.

There wasn’t one clear formula driving foot traffic, but enough square footage was filled to keep vacancy rates manageable.

Then Crowley’s pulled out in 1997. Their exit left another hole on the east end.

In November 1998, the movie theater on-site, originally opened in 1967, expanded under National Amusements.

It added more screens and briefly shifted attention back toward entertainment.

The rest of the mall stayed anchored by retail, but this addition marked the beginning of a hybrid approach—shopping on one end, movies on the other, and plenty of hallway in between.

Names changed, lights shifted, but the mall kept turning over new plans.

Retail Conversions and Redevelopment Strategy (2000–2010)

Old Navy moved in first. In July 2000, it took part of the former Crowley’s space.

That was the beginning of a series of reshuffles engineered during Tucker Development’s ownership.

Tucker had acquired the property from Forest City in early 2004.

The plan wasn’t about reinventing the mall from scratch—it leaned into dividing up former anchors, pulling in mid-tier brands, and trying to consolidate traffic around known national names.

Old Navy didn’t stay put. In 2005, the store relocated inside the mall, displacing an f.y.e. that had already closed and a Payless ShoeSource that moved elsewhere.

Once Old Navy left its first spot, Staples took it over, moving from a nearby strip mall.

It was a shuffle that put the office retailer inside the mall for the first time.

Jo-Ann Fabrics also moved that year and converted into a Jo-Ann Etc. format inside another piece of the former Crowley’s footprint.

The remainder was leased to Dunham’s Sports, which had previously operated in a different Burton retail plaza.

All three changes were completed by the end of 2005.

Mervyn’s pulled out in early 2006 as the entire chain exited Michigan.

That opened the door for JCPenney to make a strategic move.

In late 2007, they announced plans to vacate their old center-mall location and build a larger store in the former Mervyn’s space.

That buildout ran into problems. A roof fire during construction forced a temporary mall closure in September 2007.

The new JCPenney opened on March 1, 2008. It added a Sephora and modern departments.

Meanwhile, Steve & Barry’s took over the old JCPenney spot in May.

It didn’t last the year. Theaters closed again in 2009. The anchor shuffle had gone full circle.

Ownership Turnover and Mixed-Use Leasing Strategy (2011–2018)

By 2011, the mall’s layout looked patched together but still busy.

The old Old Navy space reopened that February as a Planet Fitness.

That same spring, on May 20, NCG Cinemas reopened the closed theater, rebranding it as NCG Courtland Cinemas.

They brought in projection equipment salvaged from their recently closed Clio location.

The move was practical—less about expansion, more about reusing assets and holding market ground.

Ownership changed again in 2013. Tucker Development sold Courtland Center to a Delaware-based limited liability company.

Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed publicly, and there wasn’t a big announcement attached to the handoff.

From the outside, mall operations continued as usual, but the transfer marked another shift in investment control.

In late 2015, Goodwill Industries of Mid-Michigan opened a temporary Christmas store inside the mall.

The 5,000-square-foot space ran through mid-December.

It wasn’t just a pop-up—it served as a bridge to a larger plan.

In January 2016, Goodwill moved its Center Road Burton location permanently into the mall, this time taking over 15,000 square feet.

That lease showed the new ownership’s openness to more service-based or nonprofit tenants—entities that could take space long-term, even if they weren’t retail drivers in the traditional sense.

By 2018, the Sloan Museum opened a temporary exhibit area inside the old JCPenney and Steve & Barry’s unit.

The space, once anchored by large-format stores, was now housing education exhibits.

The mix reflected a shift in how leases were structured, blending nonprofit foot traffic with former commercial square footage that no longer attracted chains.

Retail Closures, New Lease Starts, and Mall Decline (2019–2025)

The timeline of Courtland Center’s occupancy between 2019 and 2025 reads like a long ledger of exit dates.

The NCG Courtland Cinemas closed permanently on September 27, 2021.

That left the mall without a theater for the second time in under two decades.

The space sat unused. Interior traffic, already thin, dropped further after showtimes disappeared.

Staples vacated its location on June 9, 2023.

The store had once filled part of the old Old Navy wing, holding down an anchor position along the front.

Its closure removed one of the last national chains with a broad product draw.

Jo-Ann Fabrics followed.

That location closed on April 26, 2025, part of a national round of closures tied to bankruptcy filings affecting 500 locations across the country.

Yet not every square foot went dark. Ross Dress for Less opened at Courtland Center on March 9, 2024.

The store moved into a former Staples space, offering budget retail in a category that still pulls foot traffic.

Still, most of the mall’s units stayed closed or transitioned to access exterior-only.

Ross stood out because it opened, but the context around it remained unchanged: an aging structure, fewer chains, and square footage without a plan.

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