Meridian Mall, Lansing, MI Lost Woolco, Hudson's, Mervyn's, and Younkers. It's Still One of the Region's Busier Malls

Meridian Mall is an indoor shopping center in Okemos, Michigan, just east of Lansing. It opened in 1969 and has long been the main indoor mall on the east side of the area.

For most of its life, it operated like big suburban malls usually do: department stores at the ends, a long indoor row of smaller shops in the middle, a food court, and a large parking lot around it.

What is noticeable now is what fills those old main store spaces: indoor go-karts and axe throwing in one, a trampoline park in another, and a furniture store in a third.

The 2002 sporting goods store even brought a climbing-wall attraction into the mall. Today, about a third of its storefronts are empty, and the large parking lot has become part of local talk about adding housing.

Meridian Mall in 1969: Groceries, a Drugstore, and a Four-Screen Theater

On November 6, 1969, Meridian Mall opened with a Hamady supermarket, a Cunningham Drug pharmacy, a G.C. Murphy dime store, and the four-screen Meridian 4 run by American Multi-Cinema.

A shopper could buy groceries, fill a prescription, catch a movie, and eat at Schensul's Cafeteria or Elias Brothers Big Boy without stepping back into the parking lot.

The building sat at the northwest corner of Grand River Avenue and Marsh Road in Meridian Township, the suburb east of Lansing that still gets filed under the Lansing market even though Okemos is its official address.

Two department stores held the ends. Knapp's, the Lansing-based J.W. Knapp Company, carried a local name shoppers already knew from downtown.

Woolco, the discount arm of F.W. Woolworth, pulled the bargain crowd.

Two kinds of shopping under one roof, and that roof mattered through a Michigan winter.

How Meridian Mall and Lansing Mall Split Greater Lansing in 1969

Lansing Mall opened the same year on the west side of the region, and the two centers soon split the metropolitan market between them.

Lansing Mall took the west.

Meridian took the east, East Lansing, and the Michigan State University traffic rolling down Grand River Avenue, which carries the M-43 highway designation through this stretch.

Its opening helped pull a chunk of the region's shopping out of downtown Lansing and onto the Grand River and Marsh Road corner, where restaurants and other retail eventually clustered around it.

The M.H. Hausman Company built it on a site large enough for anchors, parking, and the expansions that would come later.

Buses eventually reached it too.

CATA Route 1 links the mall to downtown Lansing, and Route 22 connects it to Michigan State University and the Haslett-Okemos corridor, which matters because the mall is an employer and a destination, not only a place to spend money.

By the early 1990s, the crosstown rivalry had settled into routine: many chains kept a store in each mall, and each center held a few the other did not have.

Knapp's Becomes JCPenney, and Woolco Disappears

Knapp's filed for bankruptcy in 1980 and sold its store to JCPenney, the same swap that happened at Lansing Mall across town.

A local department-store name dropped off the directory, a national one moved in, and Penney's stayed for the next four decades.

The Hamady supermarket space was turned into a second four-screen theater, giving the mall east and west cinemas while multiplexing was still a relatively new suburban format.

In 1979, the G.C. Murphy dime store was carved up for more storefronts, trimming the everyday-errand side of the mall in favor of specialty shops.

Then F.W. Woolworth shut down Woolco in the United States, and by 1983 the old discount box had been divided into a Service Merchandise showroom, a food court, and a new corridor of stores.

The first big anchor to close became the first big anchor the mall learned to subdivide and reuse.

Hudson's in 1982, Mervyn's in 1987: The Four-Anchor Years

The 1982 expansion pushed a new wing off the south end and brought in Hudson's, the Detroit department store that gave Meridian a stronger fashion draw, along with common-area updates and a fresh row of shops.

Five years later, another wing opened with Mervyn's at its end.

By the late 1980s, the mall ran on four anchors: JCPenney, Hudson's, Mervyn's, and Service Merchandise, with a long inside row of national chains strung between them.

The bones of those expansions, the wings and the big boxes capping them, became the pattern later owners kept adapting.

The CBL Renovation: A New Food Court, Schuler Books, and a Climbing Wall

CBL & Associates Properties bought Meridian Mall in August 1998, and spent the next several years rebuilding it.

New floors, skylights, seating, and restrooms went in.

Late-1990s arrivals like Old Navy and Ann Taylor were firsts for the Lansing market, and The Children's Place joined the new tenant mix.

The food court moved to the center court in November 2000, with A&W, Sbarro, Olga's Kitchen, Panda Express, and Arby's, and Schuler Books & Music took over the old food-court space.

Service Merchandise had closed in early 1999, and Jacobson's opened in that redeveloped area in 2000, moving over from its old East Lansing store.

In 2002, Galyan's opened a big sporting-goods store beside the new food court, with shoppers later remembering a climbing wall inside.

The retenanting also pulled Bed Bath & Beyond, Steve & Barry's, Hollister, and a Suncoast movie-and-music shop into the interior.

The two older in-mall four-screen theaters closed by 2000, and a planned new multiplex was dropped during a stretch when theater chains were overbuilding.

How Meridian Mall Lost Hudson's, Mervyn's, Jacobson's, and Younkers

Names changed faster than shoppers could track. Hudson's became Marshall Field's, then Macy's in 2006.

Dick's Sporting Goods bought Galyan's in 2004 and put its own name on the former Galyan's store.

Jacobson's went bankrupt and closed in 2002 after about two years, and Younkers moved into the space in 2003.

After Mervyn's left Michigan in 2006, Younkers spread into the old Mervyn's wing too, ending up with two separate storefronts in the same mall.

Steve & Barry's closed in 2008. Gordmans closed in 2017. When Bon-Ton liquidated in 2018, both Younkers storefronts went dark.

Bed Bath & Beyond, a fixture since the renovation, closed in 2023 when the original retail chain liquidated.

Most of those losses came from chain-wide collapses or retreats.

Woolco, Service Merchandise, Jacobson's, Steve & Barry's, Bon-Ton/Younkers, and Bed Bath & Beyond disappeared as chains, while Gordmans' Meridian store closed during its company's 2017 bankruptcy, and the mall absorbed the fallout.

Each closing pulled a familiar stop off people's mental map of the building, and each empty box became the next owner's problem.

Go-Karts, Trampolines, and a Bookstore Fill Meridian Mall's Empty Anchors

High Caliber Karting & Entertainment opened in a former Younkers space in 2019 after it had sat empty more than a year, bringing indoor electric go-karts, axe throwing, arcade games, and pocket soccer into a box built for selling sweaters.

It soft-opened in late August that year and held its ribbon-cutting that September.

Launch Trampoline Park took the old Gordmans space and added trampolines, dodgeball, and laser tag.

MAC Legends Indoor Golf turned up among the newer tenants.

Trampolines and go-karts share something the old apparel chains can't put online: you have to show up.

Schuler Books crossed the hall in early 2025 into the former Bed Bath & Beyond, a 30,000-square-foot store with a larger cafe and an event stage seating more than 100.

On November 8, 2025, Ashley Furniture opened in a former Younkers anchor and filled the mall's last empty anchor box.

The outer theater had already reopened as Studio C in 2012 under Celebration Cinema, with reserved stadium seating and food service.

For a time, a museum moved in too: the Michigan Women's Historical Center and Hall of Fame left a historic Lansing house in 2017 for the mall's foot traffic and parking.

Each Michigan winter, the JCPenney wing fills with an indoor farmers market.

Meridian Mall Today: Empty Storefronts, Apartments on the Table

In mid-2025, a third of storefronts were empty.

The anchors looked healthier than the small shops; the inside row of specialty stores still carried the gaps that have hit enclosed malls across the country.

The figures CBL lists are still large: 100 stores, 947,000 square feet, an estimated 3.8 million visits in 2025, and a trade area of 331,000 people.

At the end of 2025, Meridian Mall had 77 percent of in-line space leased, $285 in in-line sales per square foot, and a ground lease running to March 2067.

CBL went through bankruptcy in 2020, cut its debt by $1.7 billion, and came out in 2021.

The mall never closed through any of it. A 2020 plan to shut the JCPenney was announced and canceled within weeks.

The churn keeps going: in 2026, BoxLunch, a pop-culture apparel and collectibles shop, opened near Charlotte Russe.

The mall still matters to Meridian Township's retail map, tax rolls, and employment base, even if its old department-store model has thinned out.

Most of what made the old directory familiar is gone.

Knapp's, Woolco, Hudson's, Mervyn's, and the two four-screen theaters all belong to a directory from a different decade.

The building stayed, with a handful of anchors and a community-events calendar that includes holiday Santa programs and the Okemos Home Show.

Township officials are now talking about apartments and more retail on the parking fields, though no public demolition plan and no approved replacement had surfaced as of August 2026.

In its early years, a family could buy groceries and catch a movie without going outside.

It now draws them for go-karts, a bookstore cafe, and the one thing it has offered since 1969 in a mid-Michigan winter: a roof.