Capital Mall is Jefferson City's enclosed shopping mall, on the west side at 3600 Country Club Drive, 4.5 miles from the State Capitol.
It opened in February 1978 with Sears, 53 stores and services, and a two-screen cinema.
JCPenney arrived in 1981, Dillard's in 1985, and the building topped out at 560,000 square feet. Sears closed in March 2017 after 39 years. Dillard's turned into a clearance center in 2019.
The gaps were filled with employers and programs. Wipro runs a 75,000-square-foot office for more than 500 employees in the old Sears building.
The Missouri Job Center took part of the same wing after a tornado damaged its own building.
Cheer practice, a children's theater, a martial arts school, a rehabilitation clinic, and state offices totaling 16,900 square feet now fill space built for fashion chains.
The mall sold for $11 million in 2012 and went under contract in October 2025 after being listed at $9.1 million. Here's how a small-market mall spent 48 years turning into something else.
The malls Jefferson City didn't get
Three regional shopping centers were on the drawing board in Jefferson City in 1969.
One near Ten Mile Drive above Route 50, one near Route 54, one east of the country club. High interest rates seem to have stopped all three.
A fourth was tied to a proposed state office building. Developer Gene Knipp offered the state 35 acres out of a 235-acre tract on the southwest side.
The General Assembly didn't fund the building in 1969, costs kept climbing, and the search for a department store anchor stalled.
Missouri's capital watched enclosed malls open in other cities and got none.
General Growth Properties of Des Moines arrived in 1974 with a proposal near Truman Road and U.S. 50.
The land was flat, close to new housing, and big enough for one level of stores and a wide ring of parking. It suited General Growth's regional-mall business.
Then came the fight over the trees. The Commission on Environmental Quality, led by Betsy DeLong, wanted a 200-foot wooded barrier around part of the site.
General Growth agreed to 120 feet on July 9, 1976. Bulldozers reached that line the next morning.
Residents on Hobbs Lane tried next, asking in 1977 for 400 feet between their back yards and the mall's parking.
By then the site had been annexed into Jefferson City, putting the zoning fight before the City Council.
What Capital Mall opened with in 1978
Capital Mall was dedicated in February 1978 at 3600 Country Club Drive.
One retail level, 335,400 square feet of leasable space, 53 stores and services, and a Sears of 74,300 square feet at the west end.
The floor plan was General Growth's compact "A Mall" layout, corridors bent into an A instead of running straight.
The shape gave the building arms that could later plug into anchors it didn't have yet.
The first tenant list included Thomas Jefferson Men's, Maurices, Kinney Shoes, So-Fro Fabrics, Osco Drug, Kirlin's Hallmark & Gifts, Shepherd of the Hills, Karmelkorn, Orange Julius.
There was no second level or parking garage. A low, one-level Sears stood at the west end, surrounded by broad fields of surface parking.
The plan left room to add anchors around the original concourse.
Before the mall opened, Crown Cinema Corporation announced a two-screen cinema for the property, targeting the 1978 Christmas season. When it opened, the theater added evening showtimes to the mall.
Three department stores by 1985
JCPenney was dedicated on January 7, 1981, with 75,200 square feet on the north side, taking the mall to 458,700 square feet. The chain held its downtown store open until 1985.
Dillard's took the east end on March 15, 1985, with 70,000 square feet. That completed the set: Sears, JCPenney, Dillard's, 560,000 square feet, 61 stores and services.
JCPenney and Dillard's sat on separately controlled parcels, leaving later redevelopment and sale plans to work around them.
The same year, the two-screen cinema was divided into four auditoriums with 1,250 seats.
A freestanding eight-screen, Capital 8, opened nearby in 1996, and the old four-screen closed on August 27, 2009, when its lease ran out. Its staff and business moved across the parking lot.
The city's shopping map rearranged itself around the building. Downtown lost its department-store trade as shopping moved west.
The east-side big-box corridor grew later: Walmart and Target along Stadium Boulevard, Kohl's and Sam's Club along Stoneridge Parkway near Missouri Boulevard, while Capital Mall remained open as an enclosed center.
After 1985 the footprint barely changed. The insides changed constantly: former retail space divided and converted, bigger tenants cutting their own doors to the parking lot.
Sold for $11 million in 2012
Ownership turned over repeatedly. General Growth built the mall, then Equitable Life Assurance held it, then a joint venture of Prudential and CenterMark.
In 1993 a group of Westfield, General Growth and Whitehall Street Real Estate bought CenterMark's portfolio of 19 shopping centers, and General Growth went back to running the place.
In 2005 the company listed the property at 532,700 square feet with its three department stores.
Four years later General Growth filed for bankruptcy reorganization after a debt-heavy expansion program ran into the national credit crisis.
The mall stayed open with little capital investment. Chains left, the interior theater's lease expired, and by 2012 the tenant mix looked thin next to Columbia Mall's.
That December, Farmer Holding Company, a Jefferson City firm whose other businesses make block, brick and concrete, bought it from General Growth for $11 million.
Under $20 a square foot, and in local hands.
Covington Realty Partners came in to manage it, with a new general manager in early 2013.
The strategy was traffic first: cheer showcases, home shows, community events, anything that put people in the corridors on a weekend.
Two districts to fix Capital Mall
The redevelopment documents read like a punch list: obsolete finishes, a roof and HVAC units needing repair or replacement, worn parking.
Farmer Holding's answer was a $35.9 million redevelopment plan, paid for partly with public money. Jefferson City approved both pieces in January 2014.
A tax increment financing district would run 23 years, capturing 50% of the growth in qualifying taxes generated by economic activity at the site, plus the increase in property-tax revenue collected as payments in lieu of taxes.
A community improvement district added 1% to the sales tax on taxable purchases inside its boundaries, for as long as 40 years.
Of the $35.9 million, $20.3 million was hard construction, $10 million of that for common areas.
New stonework facades and signage replaced the plain 1970s entrances, visible by April 2018.
Landscaped islands broke up parking rows that had run unbroken since the mall opened. The owner asked for a 50-foot monument sign on Route 50, where the city's limit was 32 feet.
In 2020, $575,000 went into heating and cooling repairs, and more than 80% of the roof was replaced starting in 2021.
The conference center voted down 9 to 1
Farmer Holding wanted convention business inside the mall.
The 2014 version: a 61,000-square-foot conference center in the building, its largest hall 40,000 square feet, with a 127-room hotel attached. $14 million for each half.
Downtown had a competing plan on West McCarty Street, a center of 45,000 square feet with 150 hotel rooms. Both wanted the same pot of at least $9 million expected from Jefferson City's lodging tax.
The mall version also leaned on its TIF and CID and proposed capturing the 3% hotel tax that normally went to the convention and visitors bureau.
Much of the public argument was geography. The mall had highway access, parking and enough interior space for a big hall.
Downtown had the Capitol, the restaurants and the hotel rooms already within walking distance.
The council's argument turned out to be money: how much public support, and how far both plans had drifted from the original idea of paying with lodging-tax revenue.
On April 7, 2014, the council rejected both proposals, 9 to 1. No hall and no hotel were built at the mall.
When the west anchor became an office
Sears announced in January 2017 that the store and its auto center were closing.
Liquidation was set to begin that month, and the doors shut at the end of March, 39 years after the store opened with the mall.
The closure also removed one of the tenants named in Ross's co-tenancy clause, which tied its lease terms to the presence of named anchors.
The old Sears space came back in pieces. Retailer Citi Trends took one section, and the Missouri Job Center moved into another in 2020 after a tornado forced the agency off Four Seasons Drive.
Wipro put a 75,000-square-foot office in the former Sears building and held its inauguration on September 14, 2023.
Wipro said the office would serve as a base for more than 500 employees supporting health-care and government clients.
It includes a laboratory for Medicaid and Medicare systems. It put a weekday workforce into a property that had run on shopping and movie traffic.
Retail kept moving in the meantime. Ross opened on October 10, 2015, in 24,300 square feet with its own outside entrance.
Dunham's Sports took 48,500 square feet in the southeast corner in November 2017.
Dillard's converted to a clearance center in late 2019, refilling the east anchor with markdowns shipped from full-line stores at 65% off or more.
Then the national failures took their turn. Rue21 closed its Capital Mall store in 2024, and Joann followed on April 26, 2025.
Under contract, open 11 to 7
Farmer Holding put the mall on the investment market in 2025 at $9.1 million, $1.9 million below the 2012 purchase price and a quarter of the $35.9 million rehabilitation plan, or $35 a square foot across a 262,100-square-foot rentable package.
Occupancy was 92.6%, net operating income $1.1 million, the land 41.9 acres with 13.8 acres marketed as buildable.
JCPenney and the Wipro building were excluded. The property was listed as under contract on October 9, 2025, with the buyer unnamed.
The mall opens at 11 and closes at 7, Monday through Saturday, noon to 6 on Sunday. JCPenney is still full-line. Dillard's Clearance opens at noon and takes Mondays off.
The corridors hold Ross, Dunham's, Buckle, Hibbett, Bath & Body Works, Kay Jewelers, Citi Trends, Vintage Stock and an arcade, plus Fuji Japanese Steakhouse, Auntie Anne's and Taqueria El Tapatio.
Around them: a martial arts school, a children's theater company, a cheer program, a rehabilitation clinic, H&R Block, a post office and state offices.
The 2025 sale package also listed Jefferson City School District space. GQT Capital 8 is still posting showtimes across the lot.
Modeled phone data estimated 3.5 million visits to the property in the year before the sale campaign, putting it, according to the sale materials, in the top 9% of U.S. shopping centers by traffic.
The newest lease in the sale package belonged to Ollie's Bargain Outlet: 23,000 square feet for 10 years, with no opening date given.
Sources and further reading
- Amended and Restated Capital Mall Tax Increment Financing Plan - Capital Mall JC, LLC and the City of Jefferson, submitted in 2013. Documents the redevelopment area, acquisition schedule, rehabilitation plan, and proposed TIF and CID project costs.
- Capital Mall TIF Plan - Office of Missouri State Auditor. Provides the state registry description and reported status of the mall rehabilitation and renovation project.
- Wipro Opens New Office in Jefferson City - Wipro, September 15, 2023. Provides first-party information about the 75,000-square-foot office, its workforce, and its healthcare and government functions.
- Capital Mall Offering Memorandum - CP Partners and ParaSell, 2025. Provides seller-side information about the offered property, occupancy, net operating income, rentable area, tenants, land, capital improvements, and reported visitor traffic.
- Capital Mall Store Directory - Capital Mall. Lists current retail, service, entertainment, educational, and community occupants and publishes the mall's operating hours.
- Dillard's Capital Mall Clearance Center - Dillard's. Confirms the store's current clearance-center designation, location, and operating schedule.
- 2015-2035 Metropolitan Transportation Plan - Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization and the City of Jefferson, revised May 17, 2017. Provides municipal planning context for the Capital Mall area and identifies adaptive reuse as an anticipated development strategy.
