The Mall at Fairfield Commons, off I-675
On an ordinary weekday, The Mall at Fairfield Commons feels more like part of your daily routine than a special place, just with skylights overhead.
You get off Interstate 675, drive past the traffic on North Fairfield Road, and park in the big lots that were built when people felt more sure about the future.
The base is close. The university is close. The Nutter Center is close. There is almost always someone showing up with ten minutes to spare and nothing specific to do.
Inside, the building does what it was made to do: keep you walking without having to think about it. Two floors. Long hallways. Escalators that never really look clean but still work.
Stores that sell the same things you find everywhere, with a few local touches - who's wearing a uniform, who's in a hoodie, who's waiting for a movie, who's just passing time because it's Ohio in December.
The mall has been open since 1993, so it has seen department stores come and go, and has found new uses for the empty spaces they left behind.
By late 2025, it had new owners again, still bringing in millions of visitors each year, still serving as a place where people from the area meet, even if they do not say that's why they are there.
Another big store is already set to open in March 2026. The place stays the same, even when the stores change.
Fairfield Commons opens, 1993
On October 27, 1993, The Mall at Fairfield Commons opened in Beavercreek after a few days of early openings that let invited guests walk around first and pretend to be surprised by what they saw.
Glimcher Realty Trust built the mall as its first two-story project, right next to Interstate 675 at Pentagon Boulevard and North Fairfield Road, near Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Wright State University, and the Nutter Center.
If you wanted a steady flow of people with free time, it made sense to put a huge mall there.
Inside, the design was simple and direct: a straight hallway, then a diagonal section, then another straight part, making it easy to keep walking and see all the stores.
The mall opened with four main stores, each built to look like it would be there for a long time. Elder-Beerman took up 150,800 square feet. Parisian had 130,000. Sears had 128,000. JCPenney had 127,000.
It was a 1990s mall opening in the classic key: big boxes, bright corridors, and the quiet confidence that shopping could be a regional pastime, not just an errand.
Five anchors, one late arrival
JCPenney arrived at Fairfield Commons with a consolidation story already underway.
The new store replaced two older Dayton-area locations: one at the Airway Shopping Center in what was then Mad River Township (now Riverside), and a smaller store in Xenia.
Retail did this often in that era, folding smaller flags into one larger one, like tidying up a map.
Penney's spot inside the mall had an unusual advantage.
Its placement allowed two sets of interior public entrances on both floors, and shoppers did not have to pass through the anchor store to reach other parts of the mall.
In many malls, anchors act like gates you must enter to keep moving. Here, they did not. It sounds minor until you are trying to cross the building in winter with a bag in each hand.
Almost a year after opening, a fifth anchor arrived. Lazarus opened on September 23, 1994, at 151,500 square feet, with official grand opening festivities from September 30 to October 2.
The delay traced back to Federated Department Stores emerging from Chapter 11 reorganization in 1992 and Lazarus' earlier commitments to competing projects.
Regal Hollywood 20 and the late-90s glow
In August 1999, Fairfield Commons' entertainment focus moved outward with the opening of Regal Hollywood 20.
It was a huge, neon-lit movie theater with 20 screens, designed in an Art Deco style. It was the kind of place that made any night feel special, even if you just showed up without a plan.
For Dayton at the time, the amenities read like a small list of future comforts: stadium seating, wireless listening devices for hearing-impaired patrons, two-day advance ticketing, an overhead lobby screen looping coming attractions, and a snack bar offering cappuccino, bottled water, and fresh-baked cookies.
It was still popcorn country, but the tone had changed. The cinema made the mall area feel like a destination after dark, not just a place to kill time before dinner.
The theater later got a longer name, Regal Fairfield Commons Stadium & RPX 20, in March 2014. Cineworld took over running it in 2018, but kept the Regal name.
The theater was not officially part of the indoor mall, but it still acted like a main attraction.
People came to see a movie, then walked around. Or said they wouldn't, but walked around anyway.
Dick's arrives; Parisian becomes a second Elder-Beerman (2004–2007)
By 2004, Fairfield Commons was still growing, and Dick's Sporting Goods opened as the sixth main store.
It took up 85,500 square feet on two floors and had an odd feature: the only way to get in from inside the mall was on the upper floor, through the food court.
If you wanted a basketball, you had to walk past the smell of fries first. Stores have made stranger choices, but not many that stand out more.
Then the department store world started to change. In 2005, Lazarus became Macy's as part of Federated Department Stores' nationwide push to fold its regional department-store nameplates into the Macy's brand.
Shoppers saw a new sign. The real story was that big chains were trying to make things simpler, join together, and seem steady.
In fall 2007, The Bon-Ton Stores, which owned Elder-Beerman, tried something new at Fairfield Commons.
The Parisian store, which Belk bought in 2006, became a second Elder-Beerman that sold women's clothing, makeup, shoes, and accessories.
The first Elder-Beerman changed to have men's, children's, and home items upstairs, and a new furniture section downstairs.
Two Elder-Beermans, each with different things, both trying to keep up without moving out.
Corporate handoffs and the 2014 reset
Fairfield Commons spent its early years owned by Glimcher Realty Trust, a company that started with Herbert Glimcher's lumber business in 1959 before moving into building and owning properties.
The company sold shares to the public on January 26, 1994, in one of Columbus's biggest stock launches.
By the end of 2013, it ran 28 malls in 15 states, with about 19.3 million square feet of space to rent out. Fairfield Commons was one of the reliable ones.
Then things changed. On May 28, 2014, Simon Property Group created a new company called Washington Prime Group and gave it 98 shopping centers.
In January 2015, Washington Prime Group bought Glimcher for $4.3 billion and started calling itself "WP Glimcher." The new company now owned about 119 properties with around 68 million square feet of space, still based in Columbus.
In September 2016, the company changed its name back to Washington Prime Group.
For shoppers, the real change was easier to see. In April 2014, Elder-Beerman said it would combine its two mall stores into one, closing the furniture gallery.
This was finished on August 20, 2014. The test was over. The space did not stay empty for long.
Restaurants replace Parisian, 2015-2018
The empty Parisian-turned-Elder-Beerman space was torn down in early 2015.
This clear choice showed the mall was moving away from big department stores inside and focusing more on restaurants and places for people to spend time outside.
Between late 2015 and 2018, six restaurants took over where the old store had been. Two were connected to the mall but could only be entered from outside, and four were separate buildings.
BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse opened on February 1, 2016, as a full-service restaurant and brewery with a big menu made for groups, families, and people who wanted to eat out and visit the mall, even if they did not say so.
The restaurant got customers from people shopping at the mall and from workers at nearby Wright-Patterson who wanted something simple and familiar.
Around this time, the mall's group of stores kept shifting toward well-known national brands and stores that always bring in shoppers, the kind of names that make a place feel up-to-date without changing the building: American Eagle/Aerie, H&M, Victoria's Secret, Bath & Body Works, JD Sports, Hollister, Hot Topic, Sephora.
The food court kept doing what food courts do, which is to make time disappear. Still, the time of big anchor stores was ending.
Closings hit, then Sears goes empty
Elder-Beerman closed on August 29, 2018, pushed out by The Bon-Ton Stores' Chapter 11 bankruptcy and liquidation.
It ended a 135-year history in the Dayton area, which is a long time to sell coats and still lose to the calendar.
The closure landed as more than a leasing problem. It was a cultural one, the disappearance of a familiar "meet me by the entrance" landmark.
Sears followed soon after. On September 18, 2018, Sears' closure was announced as part of a nationwide plan.
The store closed on December 9, 2018, leaving a large anchor box vacant and waiting for a new purpose.
That kind of vacancy changes the mood of a mall. It is not just empty space; it is a pause people can feel.
The mall's response was not a single replacement but a split. The lower level would later become entertainment. The upper level was courted by furniture.
Even before the Sears reduction was official, The RoomPlace was announced on July 26, 2018, with trade coverage describing a 57,000-square-foot store planned for fall 2019 in the upper level.
The plans were confirmed again when Sears' closing became real. Certainty, for malls, is often just a press release with a date.
From Sears to Round1, then churches and redevelopment plans
Round One Entertainment opened in the lower level of the former Sears space on November 23, 2019, bringing an Asian-focused arcade-and-entertainment venue into the anchor mix.
Upstairs, the furniture story wobbled in public. The RoomPlace plans were reaffirmed as late as February 13, 2020, then dropped.
On February 25, 2020, Morris Home Furniture was announced instead. The RoomPlace confirmed two days later that it had shelved its Dayton entry.
Morris opened on June 15, 2020, a locally based chain taking the upper Sears level. Later, from June 20 to August 2022, Morris ran a pop-up clearance and closeout location in the former Elder-Beerman space.
Non-retail uses moved in, too. In December 2020, Mosaic Church was reported as taking about 75,000 square feet of the former Elder-Beerman space, after holding services in movie theaters and parking lots.
The church opened on the upper level on January 10, 2021. University Baptist Church was also suggested for the lower level, but later developments did not confirm it.
In June 2021, Synergy & Mills Development announced "The Meridian," a $10+ million plan with Washington Prime Group to convert the entire former Elder-Beerman building into office, laboratory, and research-and-development space, pitched toward defense contractors near Wright-Patterson.
As of December 2025, the plan still had not proceeded. In early 2022, another tenant arrived briefly: "Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel: The Exhibition," running January 14 through February 27 in the upper level.
House of Sport and the March 2025 sting
By early 2025, the mall was juggling reinvention at full speed.
On March 6, 2025, federal agents arrested a kiosk operator for allegedly trafficking counterfeit goods at kiosks in the mall, executing a search warrant and seizing suspected counterfeit items.
It was an operational jolt, the kind that reminds everyone that mall management is not only about leasing and snow removal.
The next day brought a different kind of headline. Dick's House of Sport opened March 7, 2025, in the former Elder-Beerman space, following reports in February 2024 that the concept was coming.
The format leaned hard into experience: climbing wall, golf simulators, multi-sport cages for baseball, softball, lacrosse, and soccer, an outdoor track, and a 17,000-square-foot outdoor turf field that can become a winter skating rink.
The older Dick's Sporting Goods location became vacant, with signs indicating operations would move into House of Sport.
Macy's, which had held on through the 2008 financial crisis and years of consolidation, announced closure on January 9, 2025, part of a plan to close 66 stores nationwide.
The Fairfield Commons Macy's closed on March 23, 2025.
Sale season, strong traffic, Dillard's ahead
Ownership shifted again. Washington Prime Group, which filed for Chapter 11 on June 13, 2021, announced on April 15, 2025, that it intended to sell Fairfield Commons.
The sale closed on October 29, 2025, to a joint venture between Spinoso Real Estate Group and Kize Capital, their second Ohio acquisition after buying SouthPark Mall in Strongsville in 2021.
The timing carried a local irony: on October 27, Hull Property Group announced it had acquired the Dayton Mall, ending that mall's management by Spinoso.
The present mall is still big, still busy: over 120 shops, restaurants, and services, drawing more than 5.3 million annual visits, the most-visited retail destination in the Dayton region.
JCPenney remains active and ranks as the third most-visited store in Ohio.
The wider trade area counts over 820,000 residents, plus more than 1,500 hotel rooms within 1.8 miles, with Fairfield by Marriott and Towneplace Suites by Marriott recently adding 160 rooms nearby.
Wright-Patterson remains the giant next door, with more than 38,000 employees and a reported $17 billion annual economic impact, alongside Premier Health (14,000 employees) and Kettering Health (12,000).
The next anchor is already dated. In late 2025, Beavercreek issued a certificate for Dillard's to open in the former Macy's space, and Dillard's set a planned grand opening of March 19, 2026, describing the store at 160,000 square feet.
It will join the mall's current anchor mix - JCPenney, Dick's House of Sport, Round One Entertainment, and Morris Home Furniture - while the former Dick's Sporting Goods box waits for its next identity.
The mall has been here before. It usually finds one.
