From orchard ground to sledgehammers on its north end: what University Mall in Orem, UT has turned into

University Mall in Orem, Utah, opened in March 1973 on land that had been apple and cherry orchards.

It was one long indoor street. ZCMI, the Utah department-store chain, stood at one end and JCPenney at the other.

In 1998 JCPenney packed up for a brand-new mall in Provo, the next city over. ZCMI weighed leaving too.

For a while the whole east end of the mall had no department store at all.

It was rebuilt around Nordstrom, and more than 2,500 people applied for about 150 jobs in the new store.

Shoppers came in past fireplaces and leather chairs. Inside there were aquariums and a cafe.

In February 2012 Nordstrom closed its Orem doors and opened a new store in Salt Lake City that March.

By then the north end had been dark for years, ever since Mervyn's closed in 2008.

In May 2015 Orem's mayor took a ceremonial sledgehammer to it.

Today the whole place goes by University Place. The word mall is gone from its name.

Orchard ground and one enclosed floor

Apple and cherry orchards had covered parts of the land near University Parkway and State Street before University Mall opened there in March 1973, at 575 East University Parkway in Orem, Utah.

Woodbury Corporation, a family development company founded in 1919, built it as one enclosed floor with a department store at each end: ZCMI, the Utah chain then linked to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, on the west, and JCPenney on the east.

Surface parking surrounded the building.

Woodbury still owns and manages it, and since 2015 the property has gone by University Place, a district of shops, offices, homes, and a hotel.

A larger parcel and access to BYU students favored Orem over downtown Provo, where officials had hoped the mall would go.

State Street was the established north-south commercial road, and University Parkway led toward Brigham Young University in Provo, so the site could draw shoppers from across the Provo-Orem area.

In July 1981, Mervyn's opened a third department store on the north side of a mall that had been laid out from west to east.

Houses north of the mall make way for Costco

In 1997 JCPenney announced it would move its Orem store to Provo Towne Centre, a new mall going up in neighboring Provo, and ZCMI considered leaving as well.

On April 28, 1998, the Orem City Council approved incentive agreements under which ZCMI agreed to stay and remodel.

Woodbury agreed to buy the vacated JCPenney property and invest in the mall.

Provo Towne Centre opened that October, with JCPenney among its stores.

North of the original mall stood houses.

Woodbury bought roughly 30 to 40 of them, and many of the purchases were negotiated by the mall's general manager, who had grown up in Orem and knew some of the owners.

The lots made room first for Costco, which opened a warehouse store there on November 23, 1999, and later for housing.

The warehouse had its own building and its own parking outside the enclosed corridor, and it widened the range of weekly shopping trips that reached the site.

An empty store and 67 acres of parking

Mervyn's closed its Orem store in 2008, during the liquidation of the chain, and the north building, with its front of glass decorative features and concrete trim, was still empty on December 10, 2013, when the Orem City Council voted to rezone roughly 112 acres of the property as a mixed-use district.

About 67 of those acres were paved parking. One council member opposed the change.

Under the new zoning, offices, apartments, a hotel, and green space could go on land that had mostly held parked cars.

The plan presented with the rezoning also included a public green, a swimming and tennis facility, a 120-room hotel, several kinds of housing including senior housing, and four office buildings.

The existing mall would get new flooring and upgraded common areas.

Traffic came up as well, since the new buildings would change how people reached a district already busy with cars.

One anchor reused, one torn down

At the east end, Woodbury had rebuilt the old JCPenney space into a new wing with a food court and smaller shops.

Nordstrom opened a 122,000-square-foot store there on March 29, 2002, with fireplaces and leather seating near its entrance.

In November 2011 Nordstrom announced it would leave, saying the store's sales were below its requirements.

The store closed on February 24, 2012, affecting about 170 nonseasonal employees.

On March 22, 2012, Nordstrom opened a new store at City Creek Center in Salt Lake City and offered the Orem employees places at other company locations.

The Orem building stayed up.

RC Willey, a home-furnishings retailer, opened in it on April 16, 2015, with about 180 employees.

On the north side, the former Mervyn's came down that spring.

On May 12, 2015, Orem's mayor and Woodbury representatives swung ceremonial sledgehammers at it before heavy machinery took the building down.

Woodbury said the concrete would be recycled into foundations for new construction.

Park Avenue and the Orchard on the north side

The Mervyn's land became part of a new street system.

Park Avenue, a new internal road, ran past the old store site and connected State Street with 800 East.

Where the department store had stood, the Orchard and Kid's Place opened on October 3, 2016, with a ribbon-cutting attended by Woodbury family members and the mayor.

The Orchard's name came from the fruit trees that had once grown on the land.

Across its roughly 2 acres were a lawn, covered places to sit, a fountain putting on choreographed water and light shows, and three shaded pavilions fitted with cushioned seats.

At the north edge, large hydraulic doors linked Kid's Place's indoor and outdoor play areas, where children could use monkey bars, climb a wall and logs, and explore wooden treehouses.

Across the rest of the property, Woodbury had started construction on its first new Class A office building in January 2015, held a groundbreaking for the wider redevelopment on February 5, and finished the office building in 2016 at the corner of University Parkway and State Street.

Apartments called Aston at University Place opened in stages along the east side in 2016 and 2017.

One Aston building held 103 units.

Shops facing the new roads got more direct outside entrances than the original single-floor corridor had allowed.

Plans that changed before opening

In 2018 Woodbury committed about $1 million toward a Hale Center Theater Orem venue at University Place.

In 2022 the theater group accepted land and a $5 million donation in neighboring Pleasant Grove, and the University Place theater was never built.

The group's new theater, The Ruth, opened in Pleasant Grove in January 2025.

On the west side, Macy's, by then the name on the store that had opened as ZCMI, announced its closing in April 2019 and shut the store that summer.

Demolition of the 1973 building began in early 2020.

Dillard's, named as the successor that January, was first set to open in spring 2021.

Its new 160,000-square-foot store on the same site, facing State Street, opened on March 16, 2022.

Dillard's moved there from Provo Towne Centre, the mall JCPenney had left Orem for in 1998.

The 2013 plan had described a 120-room hotel.

The Courtyard by Marriott Orem University Place opened on February 15, 2024, with 140 guest rooms and an indoor pool.

A planned Home Depot beside backyards

A Home Depot of roughly 135,000 square feet was planned on the property south of Costco, along Park Avenue and close to existing homes.

Because a small residential parcel next to the site needed a different zoning designation, the store required a city vote, not only a building permit.

In late 2025, neighbors objected to delivery trucks, loading-dock noise, lighting, hours of activity, and the short distance between the back of the store and their yards.

On December 3, 2025, the Orem Planning Commission split three to two in favor of the zoning change but fell short of the votes needed for a formal recommendation.

The City Council approved it on December 9 by a divided vote, with added protections: a 12-foot masonry wall along the boundary, landscaping and buffers, and strips of land transferred to neighbors.

The commission approved a site plan of approximately 9.3 acres with an estimated 397 parking stalls on March 4, 2026, and on May 12 the City Council approved the vacation of a 0.16-acre section of 1000 South for the development.

When the council rezoned the property in December 2013, about 67 of its roughly 112 acres were paved parking.

The property now has 913 multifamily units.