Florence Mall is an indoor

shopping mall A shopping mall (or simply mall) is a North American term for a large indoor shopping center, usually anchored by department stores. The term "mall" originally meant a pedestrian promenade with shops along it (that is, the term was used to refe ...

Florence, Kentucky Florence is a home rule-class city in Boone County, Kentucky, United States. Florence is the second largest city located in Northern Kentucky, after Covington, and part of the Greater Cincinnati Metropolitan Area. The population was 31,946 at ...

, United States. Built in 1976 by

Homart Development Company Homart Development Company, a Chicago-based subsidiary of Sears, was one of the largest builders of shopping centers and malls in the United States from 1959 to 1995. Company history As retail development in the United States shifted away from d ...

, the mall originally featured

Sears Sears, Roebuck and Co. ( ), commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began a ...

Shillito's John Shillito & Co. (commonly known as Shillito's) was Cincinnati's first department store. In 1817 John Shillito (November 1808-September 1879) arrived in Cincinnati (from Greensburg, Pennsylvania). The nine-year-old lad was soon working for th ...

, Pogue's, and

JCPenney Penney OpCo LLC, doing business as JCPenney and often abbreviated JCP, is a midscale American department store chain operating 667 stores across 49 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. Departments inside JCPenney stores include Mens, Womens, Boys, Gir ...

as its four

anchor store In retail, an "anchor tenant", sometimes called an "anchor store", "draw tenant", or "key tenant", is a considerably larger tenant in a shopping mall, often a department store or retail chain. They are typically located at the ends of malls. Wit ...

s. The mall features over 100 stores and a

food court A food court (in Asia-Pacific also called food hall or hawker centre) is generally an indoor plaza or common area within a facility that is contiguous with the counters of multiple food vendors and provides a common area for self-serve dinner. I ...

. Another notable feature of the mall is the

Florence Y'all Water Tower The Florence Y'all Water Tower is a water tower owned by the city of Florence, Kentucky, United States. It stands between the Florence Mall and interstate highways 75 and 71, where it is seen by millions of interstate motorists annually. The ...

on the mall property; this

water tower A water tower is an elevated structure supporting a water tank constructed at a height sufficient to pressurize a water distribution system, distribution system for potable water, and to provide emergency storage for fire protection. Water towe ...

originally bore the mall's name, but was altered prior to the mall's opening. The mall's anchor stores are JCPenney and two locations of

Macy's Macy's (originally R. H. Macy & Co.) is an American chain of high-end department stores founded in 1858 by Rowland Hussey Macy. It became a division of the Cincinnati-based Federated Department Stores in 1994, through which it is affiliated wi ...

, with the former location of Sears being vacant. Florence Mall is owned and managed by

Namdar Realty Group Namdar Realty Group is an American shopping mall investment company based in Great Neck, New York. They primarily purchase shopping malls with partner Mason Asset Management. Namdar and Mason are both family owned, and as of 2021, own over 400 p ...

History

The Florence Mall opened in 1976 on a site along

Interstate 75 Interstate 75 (I-75) is a major north–south Interstate Highway in the Great Lakes and Southeastern regions of the United States. As with most Interstates that end in 5, it is a major cross-country, north–south route, traveling from S ...

just south of

Kentucky Route 18 Kentucky Route 18 (KY 18), also known as Burlington Pike, is a state highway that serves as a major road through Florence and Burlington in the U.S. state of Kentucky. The western terminus of the route is at KY 338 in Rabbit Hash. The eastern ter ...

. The two-story mall was constructed by

, the real estate division of

. Sears also served as one of the anchor stores, opening on March 10, 1976. The mall itself opened 6 months later, with Pogue's serving as the second anchor. Two more anchors,

and

, were added in 1977 and 1978, respectively. At the time of opening, the mall had 87 stores. The mall's opening led to the development of several retail stores in Florence, and as a result, the city became a retail hub for northern Kentucky. While JCPenney remained the same throughout the mall's history, the other three anchor stores changed as chains were acquired, merged or closed. The Shillito's chain was merged with Rike's and all former Shillito's and Rike's stores briefly carried the dual branding of Shillito-Rike's from 1982 until 1986, when the chain was merged into Lazarus. Pogue's was converted to

L.S. Ayres L. S. Ayres and Company was a department store based in Indianapolis, Indiana, and founded in 1872 by Lyman S. Ayres. Over the years its Indianapolis flagship store, which opened in 1905 and was later enlarged, became known for its women's fash ...

in 1983, which in turn sold its store to

Hess's Hess's was a department store chain based in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The company started in 1897 with one store, originally known as Hess Brothers, and grew to nearly 80 stores by its peak in the late 1980s. The chain's stores were closed or sold ...

5 years later. Also in the mid-1980s, the

was renovated. Hess's closed in 1993, and one year later, Lazarus moved its home goods into the former Hess's space. During the 1990s, the mall underwent an $8 million renovation, including the addition of 64 new tenants. In 2003, the mall was acquired by General Growth Properties in partnership with the

Teachers' Retirement System of the State of Illinois The Teachers' Retirement System of the State of Illinois is an American state government agency dealing with pensions and other financial benefits for teachers and other workers in education in Illinois. Purpose The Illinois General Assembly c ...

. General Growth had managed the property for several years prior. Both Lazarus stores were converted to Lazarus-Macy's in 2003, then to just

in 2005. The food court was renovated again in 2004. On August 22, 2018, it was announced that

would be closing in November 2018. Brookfield sold the mall in 2021 with JLL managing the mall. On June 15, 2022, the mall was sold again to Mason Asset Management and Namdar Realty Group, with Mason overseeing leading efforts and Namdar managing the mall.

Water tower

Two years before the mall's opening, a

was built between the mall and Interstate 75 with "Florence Mall" painted in large letters on two opposite sides. But when the city was informed that this commercial advertisement was illegal as the mall did not yet exist, Florence's then-mayor C.M. "Hop" Ewing came up with the idea of changing the "M" in "Mall" to a "Y" and adding an apostrophe, changing the text to "Florence

Y'all ''Y'all'' (pronounced ) is a contraction of ''you'' and ''all'', sometimes combined as ''you-all''. ''Y'all'' is the main second-person plural pronoun in Southern American English, with which it is most frequently associated, though it also ap ...

". The tower has since become a major landmark for the city.

References

External links

{{Cincinnati malls Shopping malls established in 1976 Shopping malls in Kentucky Buildings and structures in Boone County, Kentucky Tourist attractions in Boone County, Kentucky 1976 establishments in Kentucky Florence, Kentucky