Ashtabula Mall (later Ashtabula Towne Square) opens in 1992
In the fall of 1992, Ashtabula County acquired a new interior. The Cafaro Company opened an enclosed, single-level mall at 3315 North Ridge Road East, near Lake Erie and roughly sixty miles northeast of Cleveland.
It was pitched as an economic engine for a county that had learned to count losses and still wanted a place where people showed up.
The scale was part of the seduction. The building was described as about 1,075,000 square feet, with room for roughly seventy in-line stores and a food court.
Later leasing materials broke the property into about 813,500 square feet of mall space, including roughly 201,600 square feet in mall shops, 150,500 square feet in outparcels, and 461,300 square feet in anchor space.
At opening, about 1,200 people worked there, and roughly eighty-four percent of the space was leased.
Six anchors were meant to hold the whole thing steady: Dillard's, JCPenney, Kmart, Phar-Mor, Carlisle's, and Sears. Sears and Phar-Mor opened in August.
Around it spread a roughly 95-acre site with about 3,880 parking spaces, built for the idea that the future would arrive in cars.
Prototype anchors and the Phar-Mor fall
The mall opened with a faint whiff of experimentation. Kmart and Phar-Mor were described as prototypes, which sounded flattering until you realized it meant the town was the test.
Kmart's version would eventually be expanded into a Super Kmart, a one-stop geography lesson in mass retail.
Phar-Mor's debut came with a milestone. On July 22, 1992, the chain counted the Ashtabula store as its three-hundredth and cut a ribbon to prove it.
Nine days later, executives were fired amid allegations of inflated earnings and embezzlement.
Roughly $10 million was said to have been hidden and diverted into Mickey Monus's World Basketball League venture. This extravagance turned the words "everyday low prices" into a kind of punchline.
On August 17, 1992, Phar-Mor filed for Chapter 11. The mall had barely opened, and one of its showpiece anchors already carried a lesson: sometimes the grandest entrance is just the first step in a long exit.
Anchor turnover and early decline
In 1994, Carlisle's closed after the chain went bankrupt, leaving one of the main anchor spots empty. Dillard's stepped in and turned the space into a Dillard's Home Store, hoping to keep the mall stable.
It was a tidy solution, and for a while it worked, at least on the level of what the directory could claim.
The deeper vacancy was Phar-Mor's.
After the scandal and Chapter 11 filing, Phar-Mor kept operating for years, but the Ashtabula location later closed; the chain ultimately liquidated and closed its remaining stores in 2002.
The empty building became a kind of negative landmark, big enough to notice, but so familiar that people stopped paying attention.
In 2005, Steve & Barry's moved into the former Phar-Mor space, importing cheap casual apparel and a brief jolt of renewal.
That same year, Dillard's closed the Home Store to focus on its main fashion location. The consolidation did not save the relationship.
By 2007, Dillard's main store closed as well. The mall still had its roof and its walkways.
It was the anchors, one by one, that stopped anchoring.
Cabot's makeover, and the exits it missed
In 2007, the Cafaro Company sold the mall to Cabot Investment Properties for $44.4 million. In 2008, it was renamed Ashtabula Towne Square.
Cabot paired the new name with a renovation: upgraded lighting, refreshed facades, new flooring, and new seating.
A community room arrived. Restrooms were renovated, including a family restroom.
The mall introduced an Entertainment Zone, soft seating, and a boating-and-camping-themed soft-play area. A redesigned center court was set up for large community events.
Outside came a refurbished and relit parking lot and a multimedia pylon display. In 2017, a fountain and plant garden were added.
The leases did not cooperate. Around the renaming, stores closed in clusters: Old Navy, Spencer's, Claire's, Fashion Bug, Lane Bryant, Payless ShoeSource, Wendy's, GameStop, Mr. Hero, and J.B. Robinson Jewelers.
Ruby Tuesday left in March 2008. Steve & Barry's followed later that year. Finish Line, King's Jewelers, Zales, and Waldenbooks disappeared soon after.
Foreclosure math and the Sure Fire salvage
The renovation made the hallways look better, but it did not solve the money problems. Cabot bought the property with a loan of about $40.2 million. In 2011, Bank of America took back the property.
Lawsuits filed in 2011 and 2012 alleged fraud, and the mall's story acquired a second life as litigation. In 2012, Sears closed, and its departure was felt strongly.
Sears was one of the mall's original anchors and a trusted place for appliances and basic clothes. While the closure was part of a larger company pullback, people in the area saw it as another sign against the mall.
In mid-October 2014, the mall was purchased out of receivership for $6.1 million by Sure Fire Group, a group of four local investors buying from Morgan Stanley Capital I.
The registered agent of Sure Fire Group, said, "We are doing this for the community," a phrase that carries both optimism and a warning about how much work remained.
Optimism, pop-ups, and a shrinking directory
In early 2015, the mall looked like it was persistent with fluorescent lighting. The owners were talking with retailers but had not signed deals.
The arcade had reopened the previous December. A kettle corn stand sweetened the food court.
The building had recently lost RadioShack and The Deb to corporate downsizing, and temporary holiday vendors such as Ash-Craft Garden Shoppe and Homier popped up over Christmas.
Green Earth Farm Homegrown Tie Dyes sold duct-tape wallets, candles, hemp bracelets, earrings, and tie-dye shirts.
Elderly mall walkers treated the corridors as cold-weather exercise. Events like the Ashtabula County Home Show, held March 6-8, drew bursts of traffic.
The directory listed EB & Co., Sears Auto Center, GNC, Super Kmart, MasterCuts, Bath & Body Works, Buy Sell and Trade, Cinema Six Theater, B&B Gifts, JCPenney, Kay Jewelers, JoAnn Fabrics, Little Caesars, Pretzelmaker/Great American Cookie, Hollywood Nails, JCPenney Styling Salon, Verizon, Shoe Dept., Dunham's Sports, and Esther's Sports Cards & Collectibles.
It was a functioning mall, but its center was narrowing.
A theater closes, then a family returns
In 2016, Super Kmart closed, leaving JCPenney and Dunham's Sports as the last occupied anchors.
In February 2020, Sure Fire sold the mall and its attached properties for roughly $10.2 million to a Kohan-linked holding company known for collecting struggling malls and producing mixed results in upkeep.
Then JCPenney made the national news and the local news. On June 4, 2020, the company announced it would close the Ashtabula store by about October as part of a plan to shut 154 locations nationwide.
With JCPenney gone, Dunham's Sports became the mall's lone remaining anchor by default; most of the other former anchor boxes sat empty, leaving the long interior walkways built to connect them.
The theater held on until July 20, 2023. Once listed as Cinema Six and later branded AMC Classic after AMC took over Carmike in December 2016, it shut its doors and left Ashtabula without a movie theater.
Mixed-use tenants and the new mall math
Sure Fire Group bought the mall back on August 23, 2023, for $2.5 million. By late 2024, estimates put operating tenants somewhere between twenty-five and forty-nine out of seventy spaces.
One leasing pitch put occupancy at 35.7% and asking rents around $9 per square foot per year.
The thirty-mile trade area totals about 250,300 people in 93,300 households, with average household income around $57,200, and employers like KraftMaid Cabinetry, Ashtabula County Medical Center, and Molded Fiber Glass.
Tourism helps too: sixteen wineries, the state's longest covered bridge, and more than $340 million in annual tourism revenue.
A craft-store exit, a theater returns
The former Sears space has been converted into health and wellness uses, including University Hospitals and a fitness center, and Planet Fitness has joined the roster.
On March 30, 2024, JOANN closed inside Ashtabula Towne Square.
It was the kind of shutdown that does not come with fanfare, just a suddenly useless storefront and a reminder that routine retail has been thinning out for a while.
In September 2025, the place showed signs of movement again, in the specific way malls now move: with niche tenants and entertainment.
On September 20, Bricks & Minifigs Ashtabula held its grand opening in the mall and drew a big turnout.
Whatever else you can say about a Lego resale shop, it gets people to show up in person, linger, and talk to strangers about tiny plastic dragons.
Five days later, on September 25, another report confirmed the bigger news.
A local family had signed a lease and begun renovating the old AMC theater to reopen it as J-PAL Cinemas, hoping to open before the holiday season.
By December, the schedule became clearer.
Gift cards were set to go on sale on December 10. The theater was scheduled to open on December 19, 2025, in the old AMC Classic - Ashtabula 6 space, with a ribbon-cutting planned for December 22.
For a struggling mall, a working cinema is not decoration. It is traffic with a schedule.
