River Oaks Center is a shopping mall located at the southeast corner of River Oaks Drive and Torrence Avenue in

Calumet City, Illinois Calumet City ( ) is a city in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The population was 36,033 at the 2020 census, a decline of 2.7% from 37,042 in 2010. The ZIP code is 60409. Etymology The word ''Calumet'' is the Miꞌkmaq and French word for ...

, a suburb south of

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

. River Oaks Center is the seventh largest in the Chicago metropolitan area totaling . Today, there are over 140 stores and two anchors including

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 ...

and

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 two vacant anchors last occupied by

Carson Pirie Scott Carson Pirie Scott & Co. (also known as Carson's) is an American department store that was founded in 1854, which grew to over 50 locations, primarily in the Midwestern United States. Sold to the holding company of Bon-Ton in 2006, but still op ...

and

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 ...

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 ...

and Mason Asset Management manages and owns River Oaks Center.

History

It opened in 1966 and was a development of KLC Ventures, a firm that included the pioneering developer Philip M. Klutznick and his son Tom. The elder Klutznick had developed

Park Forest, Illinois Park Forest is a village located south of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, with a small southern portion in Will County, Illinois, United States. The village was originally designed as a planned community for veterans returning from World War II ...

, after World War II, as well as

Oakbrook Center Oakbrook Center is a shopping center located near Interstate 88 and Route 83 in Oak Brook, Illinois. It was originally opened in 1962. It is the second largest shopping center in the Chicago metropolitan area by gross leasable area, only surp ...

in Oak Brook in 1959 and

Old Orchard Shopping Center Westfield Old Orchard, formerly Old Orchard Shopping Center, is an upscale shopping mall in the Chicago metropolitan area. It is located in Skokie, Illinois. Anchor stores include Nordstrom and Macy's. History Westfield Old Orchard opened in Oct ...

in Skokie in 1956. River Oaks originally opened as an outdoor mall with one minor and two major department stores. The original anchors were

Marshall Field's Marshall Field & Company (commonly known as Marshall Field's) was an upscale department store in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in the 19th century, it grew to become a large chain before Macy's, Inc acquired it in 2005. Its eponymous founder, Mar ...

, which built a store,

, and a branch of Edward C. Minas Company, which was based in nearby Hammond, Indiana. Other major stores included a Jewel supermarket and

Osco Drug Osco Drug and Sav-on Drugs were the names of a pair of chain pharmacies that operated in the United States. Osco Drug was founded by the Skaggs family. Alpha Beta grocery store was purchased by American Stores in 1961. Skaggs Drug Centers boug ...

at the south end, and a S. S. Kresge dime store next to Sears. Kresge closed in 1987 and became a movie theater, while the closure of Jewel made way for a

McDonald's McDonald's Corporation is an American multinational fast food chain, founded in 1940 as a restaurant operated by Richard and Maurice McDonald, in San Bernardino, California, United States. They rechristened their business as a hambur ...

restaurant and a second theater complex. Many of the stores in the mall in its first 20 years were outposts of Chicago retailers, including Chas A. Stevens,

Kroch's and Brentano's Kroch's and Brentano's was the largest Bookselling, bookstore in Chicago, and at one time it was the largest privately owned Chain store, bookstore chain in the United States. The store and the chain were formed in 1954 through the merger of the ...

and C.D. Peacock.

took over the Edward C. Minas store in 1982. In 1985, the mall was expanded when

moved its store from downtown Hammond, Indiana, to the northwest portion of the mall's parking lot. A new wing was also built to connect JCPenney to the mall and a food court was added on the enclosed lower level.

Expansion

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the then owner, JMB Corp. of Chicago, had several plans to expand and enclose the outdoor mall. These plans included adding a second level and possibly a fifth department store at the end of the southeastern wing of the mall. These plans coincided with Chicago's Lake Calumet Airport which would have been just a few miles north of the mall and would have transformed the area around the mall into an office and business hub. However, these plans never materialized and finally, in 1993, JMB began a smaller version of the redevelopment which included additional retail space and enclosing the common areas mall. In 1994, the redevelopment was completed. The mall was enclosed and of

gross leasable area In architecture, construction, and real estate, floor area, floor space, or floorspace is the area (measured as square feet or square metres) taken up by a building or part of it. The ways of defining "floor area" depend on what factors of the buil ...

was added. New retailers opened at the mall and the tenant mix became more upscale bringing in some retailers who had not yet located in the Southern Suburbs. The mall's size was brought up to making it the largest mall in the South Suburbs.

closed in January 2013.

closed on June 9, 2013. On June 4, 2020,

announced that it would be closing as part of a plan to close 154 stores nationwide. However as of August 2020, this store is no longer on the closing list and will stay open. In late 2019, new anchor to the southeast wing of the mall has been proposed as th
Southland Live Casino
If approved and selected by the Illinois Gaming Board, a temporary casino will initially open in the former Carson's store space until the permanent 150,000 square foot casino is constructed, followed in the future by a 200 room hotel. The site was expected to be approved by October 2020 but the decision has been delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bus routes

Pace * 353 95th/Dan Ryan CTA/Calumet City/Homewood * 358 Torrence * 364 159th Street

References

{{Shopping malls in Illinois Shopping malls established in 1966 Calumet City, Illinois Shopping malls in Cook County, Illinois 1966 establishments in Illinois Namdar Realty Group