Deerbrook Mall is a shopping mall in Deerfield, Illinois. Located on 47.45 acres, its anchor stores are Marshalls, The Dump Furniture Outlet,

Office Depot The ODP Corporation is an American office supply holding company headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida. The company has combined annual sales of approximately $11 billion, and employs about 38,000 associates with businesses in the United States. ...

, Hobby Lobby, and

Jewel Osco Jewel-Osco is a regional supermarket chain in the Chicago metropolitan area, headquartered in Itasca, a western suburb. In 2007, the company had 188 stores across northern, central, and western Illinois; eastern Iowa; and portions of northwest ...

. Former anchors include

Best Buy Best Buy Co. Inc. is an American multinational consumer electronics retailer headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota. Originally founded by Richard M. Schulze and James Wheeler in 1966 as an audio specialty store called Sound of Music, it was rebra ...

, Bally Total Fitness,

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Blockbuster Video Blockbuster or Block Buster may refer to: * Blockbuster (entertainment) a term coined for an extremely successful movie, from which most other uses are derived. Corporations * Blockbuster (retailer), a defunct video and game rental chain ** Blo ...

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, OfficeMax, Sports Authority, TJ Maxx, Venture, Wonder, The Great Indoors, Art Van Furniture, and Bed Bath & Beyond. The mall is located on Waukegan Road, north of the Edens Spur and south of

Lake Cook Road Lake Cook Road (alternatively referred to as County Line Road or Main Street in some areas) is a major east–west highway in Cook, Lake, McHenry, and Kane Counties in Illinois. For much of its length, it marks the border between Cook and La ...

. The mall is a low priority for its developer, as its website has not been updated since 2018, as seen in the website's property map.

History

In 1970, 30 acres of land were purchased from Louis Werhane, a local farmer, with the plan to develop it into a mall. Primary construction was completed in 1971, with the mall's name being chosen by the winner of a drawing. The name is a combination of the two towns which the mall primarily serves: Deerfield and Northbrook. Originally the internal theme of the mall was of a communal street scene with streetlamps and water fountains featuring brass frogs and other sculptures of aquatic marine life. Sunken communal seating areas contributed to the small-town Main Street-like feel. The floor is mostly made of heavily lacquered-over red and brown bricks. Venture, the now-defunct retail chain, was a ten-year tenant in the mall. Previous to Venture, the space housed a

Turn Style Turn Style was a chain of discount department stores and was a division of Chicago-based Jewel, the parent company of the Jewel Food Stores supermarket chain. Some mid-western Turn Styles had an Osco Pharmacy, at the time very uncommon for a d ...

store. Venture closed and vacated the space in January 1989. Other large retailers who vacated the mall, primarily as a result of the economic failure and reduction of the chains themselves, include Service Merchandise, Spiegel Outlet, John M. Smyth's Homemakers, and Montgomery Ward. Marshalls originally occupied the interior space, hosting

T.J. Maxx TJ Maxx (stylized as T•J•maxx) is an American department store chain, selling at prices generally lower than other major similar stores. It has more than 1,000 stores in the United States, making it one of the largest clothing retailers in ...

. Montgomery Ward also operated an auto repair and tire facility in a separate outbuilding immediately southeast of the main mall, built in 1986 and last occupied by Bally Total Fitness, and closed in the summer of 2012 the building was eventually torn down.

, which occupied the former Spiegel space, closed in 2012. The former Best Buy space became a Hobby Lobby in 2015. The former Service Merchandise space was later, briefly occupied by The Great Indoors, and then for three months by a local children's superstore called Wonder!. In 2014, TJ Maxx, the last remaining tenant of the interior mall, announced that it would be relocating. Deerbrook Mall formerly housed a four-screen

General Cinema General Cinema Corporation, also known as General Cinema, GCC, or General Cinema Theatres, was a chain of movie theaters in the United States. At its peak, the company operated about 1,500 screens, some of which were among the first cinemas certi ...

movie theater, which opened months after the mall's opening as a twin (a two-screen) during an expansion. Two auditoriums were added in the 1980s. The theater closed in 2001 amid the company's bankruptcy and never reopened. In 2017, the theater, storefronts, mall interior and Ulta Beauty were demolished to make way for new construction between Hobby Lobby, south and Art Van Furniture, north. Sports Authority had closed their store as part of the chain's bankruptcy in 2016. Art Van Furniture opened Wednesday December 13, 2017, in the former Sports Authority location. OfficeMax closed on Saturday, December 16, 2017. On March 5, 2020, it was announced that Art Van Furniture would be closing as Art Van prepares to file for

Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code (Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, whe ...

and the location was eventually closed. On April 24, 2023, the closure of all remaining Illinois Bed Bath & Beyond stores was announced, and the location liquidated and closed. On October 24, 2023, it was reported that a townhome complex named "Springs at Deerfield" would be built behind the mall.

1994 fire

In May 1994, a fire broke out in the Bed Bath & Beyond store. 12 separate towns' fire departments and the Northern Illinois Police Alarm System responded to the blaze, which began on the loading dock and spread to the interior of the store, damaging merchandise and the interior ceiling.

Renovation

In 1998, Atlanta-based Lend Lease Real Estate Investments Inc. ( Lendlease Group) acquired Deerbrook Mall on behalf of one of its public pension fund clients from Valenti Builders, a Northfield, Illinois based company. The new owners began a major interior and exterior renovation to update the aging mall which had been plagued by high vacancy rates. Subsequent major renovations between 2015 and 2017 included demolition of the enclosed portion of the mall in favor of major standalone anchor tenants.

References

{{Shopping malls in Illinois Deerfield, Illinois Shopping malls in Lake County, Illinois Shopping malls established in 1971 1971 establishments in Illinois