What Northgate Mall Was Actually Built On
The ground never had much of a future as an airport. Mount Healthy Airport sat on the stretch of land off Colerain Avenue in Colerain Township, northwest of Cincinnati.
When developers broke ground in 1970, the plan was an enclosed regional mall that would anchor the whole northwest side of the city.
It worked, for a while. The opening happened in waves across the summer of 1972: Pogue's on May 20, McAlpin's on June 4, Sears on July 26.
The full grand opening came on September 10. Nearly a million square feet of retail, a Kroger supermarket, and more than 80 stores inside.
Architects Hixson, Crowther, Kruse & McWilliams and William Pereira Associates gave the place some real ambition - tent-shaped skylights, five fountains, tropical plantings, and recessed seating areas where you could stop and stay as long as you wanted.
Northgate Cinemas 1-2-3 opened on December 22, 1972, just over three months after Northgate Mall's full grand opening. Northwest Cincinnati had found its center of things.
Four Anchor Stores and Northgate Mall's Big 1990s Expansion
The main department stores at Northgate Mall changed several times. Regional chains were bought by larger companies.
Pogue's became L.S. Ayres in 1984, then J.C. Penney in 1988. McAlpin's became Dillard's in 1999.
The building itself kept getting bigger. A $2 million renovation in 1988 updated its appearance. A much larger $40 million expansion followed in 1992 and 1993.
The work included new floors, new lighting, a redesigned west wing, additions to three other wings, an 11-bay food court, and a parking garage.
A new Lazarus department store of about 180,000 square feet opened on September 17, 1993.
When the mall was rededicated on October 21, 1993, it had added 33 stores and reached about 1.1 million square feet. At that point, it had 130 stores and services in all.
Lazarus became Lazarus-Macy's in 2003, then Macy's in 2005. Northgate Mall now had four anchor stores, a food court, a movie theater, and more than 1 million square feet of space. During the 1990s, it was a real deal.
$110 Million Purchase and Plan That Fell Apart
Feldman paid $110 million for Northgate Mall in July 2005 and quickly laid out a $40 million upgrade.
The idea was to turn the property into an open-air shopping and entertainment area, remove the indoor hallways, add restaurants and a movie theater, and swap the old 1970s style for glass and curved walls.
JCPenney left in 2006 for Stone Creek Towne Center, just a one block up the road.
The last renovation work happened in 2007. By 2009, the mall was in receivership.
Dillard's closed that same year, 185,000 square feet going dark, documented in the company's own SEC filings. In February 2010, Wells Fargo filed a foreclosure on a $74.6 million loan.
A receiver sold the property in 2012 for $21.5 million. Seven years, $110 million down to $21.5 million, and even that sale didn't cover the whole site.
Sears, the vacant Dillard's building, and the former JCPenney parcel were under separate ownership.
This tangle would make every future redevelopment conversation harder.
Tabani and the Work of Backfilling a Dying Mall
After a seven-month negotiation, Tabani bought the mall in 2012. Nobody thought the days of malls with four big department stores were coming back.
The plan was more practical: take the empty department store spaces, divide them up, and rent them to large stores that did not need the indoor mall walkway to do well.
The most clearly documented piece of this was the old Dillard's building.
Township community reinvestment records put the total project cost at $6.45 million: $2.5 million to acquire the space, $150,000 in new construction, and $3.8 million in improvements.
Redesigned entrances, updated signage, fresh landscaping, and a target completion of October 10, 2013. The projections called for 17 full-time, 92 part-time, and 26 temporary construction jobs.
Marshalls was operating in that space by May 2013. Over time, the old Dillard's footprint filled with DSW, Michaels, and Ulta.
HHGregg came in as well but closed in 2017. The former JCPenney space became Xscape Theatres, putting a cinema back at Northgate Mall.
Sears in 2018, Macy's in 2020, and the Hollowing-Out of Northgate
Sears shut down in November 2018.
Macy's held on another year before announcing in January 2020 that it was closing the Northgate location in March - 139 jobs, and the end of a store that had been on the property since 1993 under three different names.
A 2020 regional analysis put Northgate Mall among the most endangered malls in Greater Cincinnati.
No traditional anchors at all, 24 vacant interior spaces, and an enclosed corridor that had stopped making sense as a destination.
Xscape in the old Penney space and the big-box strip in the old Dillard's building were keeping parts of the property alive, but the core of the thing had hollowed out.
Marshalls relocated to Stone Creek in 2023 - the same center that had taken JCPenney seventeen years earlier.
Xscape shut down permanently in December 2023. By early 2024, 37 tenants remained, and the mall cut its hours to 11 am to 7 pm starting March 1.
Why Northgate Was So Hard to Fix: Ownership Mess
The storefronts told part of the story, but the harder problem was the way ownership had broken apart. By February 2024, the roughly 60.4-acre site was split into five parcels with four different owners.
The former Dillard's building had gone to an affiliate of LNR Partners after a Tabani default. Then, on February 7, 2024, Tabani gave up a separate 9-acre parcel to lenders.
That was the third ownership change at Northgate in five months, and it left Tabani with less than half the site.
Colerain Township moved to claim a place in the middle of it.
In September 2023, the township paid $2.2 million for the former Sears parcel through the Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority, which had been authorized to bid up to $2.5 million at the Crexi auction.
The parcels were tied together by reciprocal easements and operating agreements, so owning the Sears site gave the township real leverage over the rest.
At the same time, the mixed-use town-center vision stayed on the table.
It called for housing, outdoor corridors, dining, and plazas, including a four-story, 120-unit apartment building and about 5,000 square feet of shared amenity space.
It was a good plan. It was still entirely on paper.
Demolition, a New Venue, and Whatever Comes Next
Work to tear down the old Sears building began on June 10, 2025. The building had been empty since 2018. Its roof had leaks, and the HVAC system was beyond repair.
The Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority oversaw the demolition and used Ohio development funds to remove environmental hazards.
The job was scheduled in stages. Interior cleanup began during the week of May 12. Crews started separating the Sears structure from the rest of the mall in mid-June. Full demolition began on July 21.
Another part of the property was already changing. In December 2024, new owners bought the former Xscape property for $1.8 million.
They told a Colerain Township zoning panel that they planned to spend up to $3 million on renovations.
Epic Entertainment Center opened there on February 16, 2026. The new venue filled 58,000 square feet inside a building that had once been a movie theater.
It included a multi-level indoor go-kart track, a two-story ropes course, arcade games, trampoline attractions, and space for events.
Burlington, Michaels, DSW, and Ulta Beauty still use Colerain Avenue addresses under the Northgate Mall name.
Fifty-three years after Pogue's opened on the former airport site, the Northgate name is still connected to the property.
