Woodland Mall is open. It is also abandoned by every department store that ever anchored it, and full of tenants nobody plans for when they design a mall. All three things are true.
It was built in 1987 for a city of 27,000, with Bowling Green State University nearby and a highway running through. Standard formula for a standard mall.
What took the place of the lost retail space was not a trendy concept store or a pop-up brand. It was a free food pantry for veterans, a daytime program for adults with developmental disabilities, and a community theater.
By the measure its developers used, the building has failed. By another measure, the one that counts who walks through the doors and what they need when they get there, it may be more useful now than it ever was. This is the story of how that happened.
Woodland Mall Opens on North Main Street
Bowling Green, Ohio, did not have the numbers to draw a major regional mall.
The city had roughly 27,000 residents, a county-seat role, a stretch of highway running straight through it, and a state university seven blocks away.
The Mall Company of Birmingham, Alabama, decided that was enough.
The company spent about $16 million building an enclosed single-level shopping center at 1234 North Main Street, on a roughly 42-acre lot at the corner of Newton Road on the city's north side.
Woodland Mall opened in May 1987. On May 20, three movie screens lit up inside the attached cinema.
Two days later, two more screens opened, giving the mall a five-screen theater it would keep for the next 33 years.
The strategy was familiar to anyone who watched American retail in the late 1980s.
Anchor department stores at each end of an interior concourse, specialty chains filling the middle, a food court, and a cinema to pull in evening traffic.
Customers drove in from Bowling Green, Wood County, and the surrounding farming communities. Bowling Green State University's large student body filled the gaps.
The opening lineup included Elder-Beerman and JCPenney as department-store anchors, with dozens of chain retailers between them: Fashion Bug, Waldenbooks, Payless Shoes, RadioShack, Claire's, Kay-Bee Toys, and others.
The 1988 Expansion and the First Big Anchor Loss
A year after opening, The Mall Company added Hills, a discount department store, through a $10 million expansion.
That addition pushed Woodland Mall's gross leasable area to roughly 270,500 square feet and gave the center three anchor tenants.
Hills did not last long. In 1993, the chain ran into corporate trouble and closed its Woodland Mall location, leaving behind one of the largest vacancies the property had ever seen.
That empty anchor box would sit through various short-term and seasonal uses for more than a decade before Steve & Barry's, a deep-discount apparel chain, moved in during the mid-2000s.
Cinemark took over the cinema operation in November 1989.
The theater was commonly known as Woodland Mall Cinema 5, and its five screens made it one of the steadier draws in the building across both retail booms and quiet periods.
Through the 1990s, the cinema outlasted several national chains that came and went along the interior concourse.
Deb, El-Bee Shoes, and Kay-Bee Toys all eventually departed. By 2001, occupancy had fallen to about 65 percent.
JCPenney was still in the building, but not for much longer.
Local Owners Step In and Push for a Turnaround
In June 2001, Green & Prepahn Ltd. bought Woodland Mall from THF Realty, a Missouri firm that had held the property for about eight years, for just under $2 million.
Allen Green of Al Green Builders and Scott Prephan owned the company. The sale price reflected a struggling building.
The new owners spent about $750,000 on unfinished space, bringing heat, plumbing, and electrical service into areas that had sat idle for years.
It was basic work, but the building needed it. They hired retail consultant Dan Summers to pursue national tenants, looking at coffee, tanning, fitness, jewelry, food, and entertainment uses.
They formed a student advisory board with BGSU and discussed turning space near the theater into an arcade or virtual-reality entertainment area.
Professor Tinker's Toys opened in late 2001 with a concept that combined retail space with a play area. A Sears Appliance store followed.
JCPenney closed its Woodland Mall store in the summer of 2002, and Foot Locker left in January 2003 after its lease ended.
The losses mattered, but they did not empty the property. About 91 percent of the mall's square footage remained under lease.
The cinema, Waldenbooks, Professor Tinker's Toys, and X-cape, an indoor skate-entertainment tenant, kept people moving through the building.
Woodland Mall had lost its second department-store anchor and still functioned, but it was running on smaller tenants now, and any future anchor loss would hurt more than the last.
Ramy Eidi Buys In and Fills the Mall
Ramy Eidi bought Woodland Mall in June 2004 through Woodland Town Center LLC, paying about $4 million. He became the mall's fifth owner and its second local owner in three years.
At the time, smaller retail spaces stood at around 85 percent occupancy, with the former Hills anchor box still empty and counted separately.
That number climbed fast. Within months, the in-line retail portion was nearly full, with one space left open.
Management put more money into marketing and aimed its tenant search toward service and convenience. Pet supply, beauty, and dollar-store operators moved into the planning.
By early 2005, construction crews were at work on a 38,000-square-foot addition at the front of the site.
The project called for two freestanding buildings on grassy land near the North Main Street entrance. They faced the mall, not the street, and were built to catch retail traffic from the road.
Completion was expected by spring 2006.
The property changed hands again in November 2005, when Woodland Mall Holdings LLC bought it for about $10.1 million and took on a mortgage of roughly $7.9 million.
Eidi had owned the mall for less than 18 months. Renovation work followed in 2008 and 2010.
A former Ohio Department of Job and Family Services office and call-center space, about 15,900 square feet, was converted for lease.
The Foreclosure Years and Steve & Barry's Collapse
Woodland Mall Holdings LLC stopped making monthly mortgage payments in February 2009. By July of that year, the outstanding balance plus back payments reached about $8.7 million.
Late charges and interest added more than $2 million on top, bringing the total in dispute to roughly $11 million.
After Woodland Mall Holdings LLC fell behind on the mortgage, the lender began foreclosure proceedings.
Steve & Barry's, which had finally filled the old Hills anchor space after more than a decade of vacancy, had already collapsed.
The chain went bankrupt in 2008, and its closure left Woodland Mall with another large anchor box empty.
By the time foreclosure proceedings were underway, about a quarter of the mall's tenant spaces were vacant.
The interior had grown quiet in stretches it had never been quiet in before, not the quiet of a mall closing early, but the quiet of a building with more corridor than tenants to fill it.
The mall did not close. Elder-Beerman, the original opening anchor, continued running and remained the last conventional department store in Bowling Green.
It employed roughly 40 to 50 workers. In April 2018, Bon-Ton Stores announced liquidation.
The parent company ran several regional banners, including Elder-Beerman in Ohio, along with Younkers, Carson's, and Herberger's.
The closure removed the mall's final full-line department store and affected every one of those local jobs.
Fire Code Notices and the Cinema's Last Night
In February 2019, Bowling Green fire inspectors gave Woodland Mall a deadline to fix code violations found during a previous inspection.
Smoke detectors were not functioning. Pull stations were inoperable.
The fire alarm system was not connected to an approved monitoring station. Emergency lighting and exit signs did not work properly.
These kinds of maintenance problems are common in large, partly empty retail buildings. When anchor stores close and revenue drops, costly systems often do not get regular care.
The violations did not shut the property down, and corrections were made.
One year later, the cinema closed. Woodland Mall Cinema 5 went dark on March 17, 2020, during the COVID-19 shutdown period. On July 16, 2020, the permanent closure was announced.
The theater opened with the mall in May 1987. Cinemark took over in November 1989, and the theater lasted longer than any of the original anchor stores.
Its 33-year run made it the longest continuous tenant the building ever had. After July 2020, the five screens and the evening crowd that came with them were gone, and nothing replaced them in kind.
Dunham's Holds the Floor While the Mall Reinvents Itself
Dunham's Sports became the mall's main national retail anchor after the other large-format tenants left.
It still operates at 1234 North Main Street and remains the largest active retail business in the building.
The tenants around it would not have appeared in any 1987 site plan.
Able Body Fitness opened with 24-hour member access. Alehouse Grill and B Family Sushi brought in daily food traffic.
The Fringe Thrift Closet began taking donated clothing, home goods, books, electronics, and furniture, and ran a voucher-assistance program alongside the donation intake.
Star Style Theatre created a performance space in an area that used to be busy with shoppers. Bowling Green Christian Academy used this space for three productions in April 2025 and two more in April 2026.
Angels in Arms opened near the food court in March 2024. The nonprofit serves veterans, first responders, and their families, operating a food pantry from a space that once held chain retail.
By March 2026, it had expanded into 3,350 square feet in the south arm of the mall.
The space held a larger pantry, a coffee bar, and a social area. Kan Du Group held a ribbon-cutting at its Woodland Mall location in February 2025.
The organization provides adult day support for people with developmental disabilities and uses the space for art, projects, and community outings, with a 3D printer and laser engraver on the way.
A $875,000 Starting Bid and No Completed Sale
Woodland Mall was offered through a Ten-X online auction in September 2024. The starting price was $875,000.
That amount was about one-twelfth of the $10.1 million paid for the property in 2005. The auction took place from September 23 to 25. It ended without a sale.
The listing identifies the property as a 270,000-square-foot mall on 42 acres with about 1,670 parking spaces.
The building was constructed in 1987 and updated in 2008 and 2010. About 65 percent of the property is occupied.
The listing presents several redevelopment factors: the federal Opportunity Zone designation, traffic on North Main Street, proximity to BGSU, and the size of the site.
The stated redevelopment focus is mixed-use.
By November 2025, the city's economic development office told City Council that several possible investors had shown interest.
No deals had been made. BGSU architecture students were mentioned as possible contributors to a request-for-proposals framework.
A design contest for a university village or small-house community was raised as an idea. No formal agreement or approved plan has resulted from those discussions.
In June 2025, Inspired Mindz moved into nearly 19,000 square feet in the mall.
The move brought together more than 60 vendors from northwest Ohio's 419 area code. As of May 2026, the property remains unsold. The food pantry remains open.
The day program, thrift store, and sports anchor at the far end of the concourse also remain open. The mall has no department stores, no movie theater, and no buyer. It still has operating tenants.
