Meadowbrook Mall and the Exit 121 idea
Meadowbrook Mall opened in late 1982. Many locals remember September as the time it truly came to life, when the doors opened, the air-conditioning started, and the parking lot became part of daily routines.
The property was developed by the Cafaro Company, founded in 1949 by brothers William M. and John A. Cafaro and built, over decades, into a major owner and manager of super-regional malls.
Cafaro began in Youngstown, Ohio, and is now headquartered in Niles, a detail that fits the company's style: rooted nearby, always looking one exit farther.
The mall was engineered and designed through the Keeva J. Kekst Company.
The building was designed as a single-level space for the public, with a lower level underneath for storage, maintenance, and other behind-the-scenes work that keeps the mall running smoothly.
Its location at Interstate 79, Exit 121, was chosen to serve Bridgeport, the Clarksburg area, and to attract shoppers traveling between Fairmont and Weston.
For north-central West Virginia, it was an early sign that a 'regional destination' could be created and recognized by its bright, fluorescent signs.
The first anchors, and a one-level world
From the start, Meadowbrook Mall was meant to feel complete. It had the big stores everyone knew at the time: JCPenney, Murphy's Mart, Stone & Thomas, The Bon-Ton, and Montgomery Ward.
Along with these, many smaller shops made the mall feel like more than just a bunch of stores.
Simply put, it was a cozy indoor place where you could buy socks, get a quick bite to eat, look around for fun, and leave feeling like you accomplished something.
The scale helped. Meadowbrook contains about 849,200 square feet of gross leasable area, large enough to be classed as a super-regional center.
It originally had 109 spots for stores, a number that changed over the years as shops grew, got smaller, moved, or closed.
That change was not a problem, but something planned from the start. A mall this size is designed to be rearranged without looking rearranged.
It also became, quickly, the dominant retail destination in its slice of West Virginia.
The location made it easy, but the layout made it sticky: a simple loop, a single public level, and anchors placed like magnets at the ends, turning walking into a habit that looked suspiciously like leisure.
From Bon-Ton to Sears, the shuffle begins
If you imagine a mall's story as a biography, the anchor stores are the chapters people remember best. Meadowbrook Mall went through many changes in its early years.
Sears became a tenant in 1988, not on opening day, but soon enough to show that the mall's layout was always ready to adapt.
By 1990, The Bon-Ton had closed, and the space associated with that department-store footprint was gutted to create room for Sears and additional mall area.
The details matter because they show how quickly the building learned to treat large retail boxes as flexible real estate, not sacred ground.
Other legacy names faded out of the directory over time: Ames, Murphy's Mart, Montgomery Ward, and eventually Sears itself.
Stone & Thomas, a regional department store with a long history, was bought out and became Elder-Beerman. In a way, the building held a retail family tree under one roof.
By 2013, local articles pointed out that only a few original stores remained. JCPenney was the only early anchor still open.
This kind of survival is not as special as it sounds. It shows persistence, but also proves a simple rule: the building stays, but the store names change.
Ward out, Target in, and the long gap
The early 2000s taught Meadowbrook Mall a lesson it would face again: empty main stores are not filled quickly.
Montgomery Ward closed on March 31, 2001, and Target did not open until July 20, 2003, so the space stayed empty for over two years.
During that time, the mall kept running, but the empty spot was obvious, like a missing tooth.
When Target finally opened, it showed a bigger change, moving away from old-fashioned department stores and toward the steady presence of discount and large chain stores.
Meadowbrook Mall kept changing. In 2008, Marshalls opened where the movie theaters used to be, turning a place for fun into a store with lower prices.
At the time, this change seemed like a smart move for what was coming next.
In 2015, ULTA Beauty opened, showing that the mall was still trying to give people reasons to visit.
Despite all these changes, the mall stayed a gathering place for North Central West Virginia.
People went there because it was convenient, indoors, and offered different options. You might bump into someone you knew and act like it was just by chance.
A glossy 2013 renovation, plus the ghosts
In 2013, Meadowbrook Mall followed the usual playbook for successful malls and made a big show of renovating.
The mall spent over $5 million on interior updates, which were announced during a major anniversary celebration.
Headlines highlighted that most storefronts were full, sending a clear message: investing in the mall and keeping stores open meant it was moving forward, not falling behind.
The renovation covered a lot: new ceilings and soffits, better lighting with LEDs, new floor tiles, new seating and landscaping, improved restrooms, updates to the food court and concourse, and redesigned entrances.
All these changes were meant to make the mall feel newly designed, not just kept up.
But renovations also sharpen nostalgia, because they clean up the places where memories used to stick.
A 2013 look back listed vanished businesses like Lerner's, BMoss, Rex TV, Wilson's Leather, Steve and Barry's, Highland Furniture, Fine's Men's Clothing Store, Biafore's Men's Clothing Store, and Kay-Bee Toys, plus detached presences like OfficeMax and Phar-Mor.
Even the food ghosts had their roll call: Manchu Wok, Taco Villa, Mateo's, Don Burrito, the Peanut Shack, Cheers, J.D. Bentley's, Long John Silver's, Corn Dog on a Stick, Wendy's, the Fisherman's Pub, Mrs. Powell's Cinnamon Buns, and Tater Junction.
The mall stayed busy, but it never stopped becoming a different mall.
Sears closes, Elder-Beerman falls away
Late 2016 brought the kind of news that lands locally even when it is caused nationally: Sears would close.
On December 28, 2016, reporting confirmed that the Meadowbrook Mall Sears was on the list of early-2017 closures, with liquidation set to begin January 6.
A statement identified the store at "225 Meadowbrook Road," and the Sears Auto Center was described as remaining open.
In January 2017, coverage framed the departure as the mall's first anchor loss in fifteen years. It reminded readers, pointedly, how long it took to replace Montgomery Ward with Target.
On March 27, 2017, the store officially closed its doors, leaving behind a vacancy big enough to force imagination.
Cafaro's approach was flexible and unsentimental: the space could be replaced by another anchor, subdivided into multiple tenants, possibly adapted to multi-floor concepts, or even removed to change the layout.
By late May 2017, it was clear there would be no full replacement anchor before the end of that year, with seasonal uses floated as a temporary option.
Then another retail lineage ended.
Elder-Beerman, the successor to Stone & Thomas, closed in 2018 as part of the broader Bon-Ton liquidation wave, with the Meadowbrook Mall location reaching its final closure in late August.
The mall was left with a familiar challenge: stay full, stay relevant, keep moving.
Boscov's Builds a New Gravity in 2023
In February 2023, Meadowbrook Mall announced that Boscov's would take over the former Sears wing, aiming for a fall debut.
The plan was not simply to swap one name for another.
The new store was laid out at roughly 151,000 square feet, created by combining the old Sears box with adjacent in-line spaces, and pitched as both Boscov's first West Virginia location and its 50th store.
Demolition and asbestos-abatement permits were filed to prepare the site and to set up the internal relocations that would make the footprint possible.
Marshalls shifted out of the old cinema-area footprint and into the former Elder-Beerman space, and Books-A-Million moved to a new spot inside the mall.
After Marshalls cleared out, the former cinema space was partly demolished, and a secondary space emerged that later housed Spirit Halloween as a seasonal tenant.
A Cafaro release set the opening for October 7, 2023, with a 9:30 a.m. ribbon cutting and celebrations running October 5-7.
The redevelopment drew more than $8 million in building permits, and mall management described Boscov's as the largest merchant ever to operate at Meadowbrook Mall.
By November 1, 2023, the mall was being described as more than eighty businesses strong, about 95% occupied, and enjoying the new foot traffic.
The Hive Arrives, Mall Turns to Play
In May, Rue21 was reported as closing amid broader company shutdowns, one more reminder that national chains can vanish locally without ever visiting the place to say goodbye.
Then, on December 29, 2024, the Exotic Nails & Spa unit caught fire.
Sprinklers kept it from turning catastrophic, but smoke and water damaged multiple businesses around it, the kind of disruption that forces a mall to behave like infrastructure instead of ambiance.
Against that backdrop, The Hive Entertainment Zone opened in January 2025 as a deliberate pivot toward experience. Construction began in August 2024, followed by a soft opening and a grand opening on January 24, 2025.
The Hive spans 53,000 square feet, with roughly 40,000 devoted to activity space, and is described as West Virginia's largest indoor entertainment zone.
Set beside Boscov's, it offers AeroStrike trampoline launch lanes with airbag landings, ninja courses, traverse climbing walls, laser tag, a redemption arcade, an adventure soft-play area, a kiddie inflatable park, and basketball options like Dunk Hoops and a freestyle court.
On Friday and Saturday nights at 8 p.m., it runs GLOW PARTY events, as if the mall has decided that staying open is also about staying loud.
Expansions, backfills, and new tenants
Tenant churn continued, but it arrived with a measuring tape. Shoe Dept.
Encore began a major expansion, its third since opening on March 24, 1992, growing to more than 19,000 square feet by absorbing spaces previously occupied by CP Gifts, GNC, and a cell phone store.
The displaced tenants did not vanish so much as slide along the concourse: CP Gifts relocated to the former Finish Line site near the food court, while GNC moved to a central concourse near the Armed Forces recruiting station.
Jewelry also made a small headline out of a familiar vacancy. In June 2025, Icing closed, and Ashcroft & Oak Jewelry was announced as its replacement.
The brand's first day of business was October 18, 2025, followed by a ribbon-cutting.
As the holiday season approached, reporting described four businesses coming or opening: Ashcroft & Oak (with an October 25 grand opening date), The Weekend Bistro & Bar, Tomatillo Mexican Grill for the food court, and The Scalp Lab & Spa across from Boscov's interior entrance.
It read less like a transformation than like what Meadowbrook Mall has always done best: keep the storefront count moving, one lease at a time.
Holiday crowds and tenant closures
Late 2025 brought a more public-facing kind of maintenance: keeping people on-site long enough to eat, linger, and spend.
The Weekend Bistro & Bar began operating on November 24, 2025, and was framed as the first sit-down, full-service restaurant inside the mall's main building in nearly four years.
For Black Friday, November 28, Meadowbrook opened at 6:00 a.m. and promised the first 200 people in line swag bags, including a redeemable-number chocolate bar with a top prize of a $500 Meadowbrook Mall gift card.
Management also talked about drawing shoppers from a wide region, which is a polite way of saying that the mall still believes in its own radius.
Not every headline was celebratory. Torrid was reported as closing January 4, 2026, after more than seven years, freeing 3,300 square feet and citing renovations that needed to be done, with no replacement announced.
