Kokomo Town Center, formerly Kokomo Mall, is an outdoor

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

Kokomo, Indiana Kokomo ( ) is a city in Indiana and the county seat of Howard County, Indiana, United States. It is the principal city of the Kokomo, Indiana Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all of Howard County, the Kokomo-Peru CSA, which include ...

. Opened in 1963, the property was converted from an enclosed mall to an outdoor plaza in 2014. The plaza’s stores are

Gabe's Gabriel Brothers, Inc., (doing business as Gabe's) is an American department store retail chain headquartered in Morgantown, West Virginia, United States. The company was incorporated in 1961 as Gabriel Brothers and renamed Gabe's in 2005. Gabe' ...

AMC Theatres AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. (d/b/a AMC Theatres, originally an abbreviation for American Multi-Cinema; often referred to simply as AMC and known in some countries as AMC Cinemas or AMC Multi-Cinemas) is an American movie theater chain fou ...

, Robert Miller & Son Furniture, Momentum Clothing & Accessories, Classy Nails,

CosmoProf Cosmoprof is a series of beauty and cosmetics trade shows that occur in locations around the world. The flagship event in Bologna has been in existence since 1967 and draws 2,300 exhibitors from seventy countries and more than 170,000 visitors. F ...

, and

T-Mobile T-Mobile is the brand name used by some of the mobile communications subsidiaries of the German telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom AG in the Czech Republic ( T-Mobile Czech Republic), Poland ( T-Mobile Polska), the United States (T-Mobil ...

History

Edward J. DeBartolo Corporation built Kokomo Mall in 1963. Anchor tenants included

Montgomery Ward Montgomery Ward is the name of two successive U.S. retail corporations. The original Montgomery Ward & Co. was a world-pioneering mail-order business and later also a leading department store chain that operated between 1872 and 2001. The curr ...

H. P. Wasson and Company H. P. Wasson and Company, aka Wasson's, was an Indianapolis, Indiana, based department store chain founded by Hiram P. Wasson. Its flagship store, the H. P. Wasson & Company Building, was built in 1937 and is listed on the U.S. National Register ...

, and

J. C. Penney 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, Girl ...

. By the end of the decade, the mall was purchased by Novil-Novick Associates, who enclosed the formerly open-air mall. Several stores at the mall closed throughout the 1980s, starting with National Food and Wasson's in 1980, followed by Montgomery Ward in 1981, G. C. Murphy, and several other original stores, leaving only J. C. Penney as an anchor. Meis replaced the former Montgomery Ward in 1987. After Meis opened, Kokomo Mall Associates bought the mall in 1986 from West-Penn Realty and added several new stores, including

Phar-Mor Phar-Mor (stylized as PHA℞-MOR) was a United States chain of discount drug stores, based in Youngstown, Ohio, and founded by Michael "Mickey" Monus and David Shapira in 1982. Some of its stores used the names Pharmhouse and Rx Place (purchas ...

in the former Wasson's. Also, the mall interior was largely rebuilt, and new marble flooring was installed. Meis was bought out by

Elder-Beerman The Elder-Beerman Stores Corp., commonly known as Elder-Beerman, was an American chain of department stores founded in 1883 and whose last stores closed in 2018. The chain, based primarily in the Midwestern United States, was composed of 31 stor ...

in 1989. In 1992, Manulife Real Estate acquired the mall. A year later, mall occupancy declined to 60 percent as tenants moved to other retail developments in Kokomo.

Goody's Family Clothing Goody's Family Clothing Inc. was an American chain of department stores, owned and operated by Stage Stores and headquartered in Houston, TX. It specialized in retailing on-trend apparel, accessories, cosmetics, footwear, and housewares. It wa ...

opened an anchor store at the mall in 1998, taking over several small spaces in the J. C. Penney wing. By 2010, the mall was almost again empty after Goody's closed. Elder-Beerman's parent company,

The Bon-Ton Bon-Ton Holdings Inc. is an American online retailer and former department store chain founded in 1898. After rapid expansion in the 1990s and early 2000s, the original company had financial troubles, ultimately filing for bankruptcy in 2018 ...

, closed the Kokomo Mall store in 2011 and replaced it with a

Carson's 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 ope ...

at nearby Markland Mall. The space became Robert Miller & Son Furniture one year later, coinciding with mall renovations and a rename to Kokomo Town Center. In 2014, part of the mall structure was demolished, leaving only the storefronts on the east side, plus the J. C. Penney and Robert Miller stores, and the long-abandoned Phar-Mor. The property is now owned by Veritas Realty. On June 4, 2020, it was announced that

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, Gi ...

will be closing around October 2020 as part of a plan to close 154 stores nationwide. After

closes, Robert Miller & Son Furniture will be the only traditional anchor store left. In August 2021, a Gabe's department store opened in the former JCPenney location.

References

{{Shopping Malls in Indiana 1963 establishments in Indiana Buildings and structures in Howard County, Indiana Kokomo, Indiana Shopping malls in Indiana Shopping malls established in 1963 Tourist attractions in Howard County, Indiana