All open indoor malls in Cincinnati Metro? (Columbus, Springfield: 2015, foreclosure)

[Griffland219]

I'm something of a mall enthusiast. I'm really fascinated with documenting dead malls especially, but I'm interested in all kinds.

I visited Forest Fair/Cincinnati Mills passing through the area on a trip, and it was amazing for a dead mall enthusiast like me. I'm curious if anyone could come up with a list of malls in the Cincinnati area, dead, thriving or otherwise, which are indoor malls and still open. I will definitely visit Forest Fair again if I'm in the area in the future, and want to know what else is around. I got some great responses in my thread about Forest Fair so thanks in advance.

[cincydave8]

Florence, Kenwood, Eastgate, Tri-County, Northgate and maybe Newport on the Levee...it's kind of mall thing.

[426HemiCA]

Is Northgate still open. I went by a few years ago when I was in town and it looked like it was shuttered.

Kenwood, Eastgate and Florence are probably the best in the area. Tri-County used to be nice but seems to have gone downhill the last time I was there, but that was several years ago.

[Griffland219]

Originally Posted by 426HemiCA

Is Northgate still open. I went by a few years ago when I was in town and it looked like it was shuttered.

Kenwood, Eastgate and Florence are probably the best in the area. Tri-County used to be nice but seems to have gone downhill the last time I was there, but that was several years ago.

Thank you for the info about the malls, as well as CincyDave8 for giving me the list in the earlier post.

A quick Google search shows Northgate is undoubtedly still open, and it has mixed reviews. Sounds like it's far from a dead mall though. Maybe you went by​ there on a Sunday evening or something when they were closed.

[Griffland219]

I found some information about a smaller, struggling enclosed mall called Towne Mall Galleria. If anyone knows any other somewhat obscure or smaller, but enclosed malls, that would be awesome too! Thanks again.

[MeTVisOn]

Looking for malls in their death throes? I don't know if you'll find that in Cincinnati, but let me suggest some alternatives:

-Towne Mall, Middletown
-Southland Mall, Marion
-Eastland Mall, Columbus
-Richland Mall, Mansfield - I don't know if this is a dead mall yet, I do know it was in foreclosure.
-Upper Valley Mall, Springfield

There are a few more in Northeast Ohio you may want to look up.

Nos. 1, 3 and 4 on the list were built by Dick Jacobs, who also built the Eastgate Mall in Cincinnati.

[jjakucyk]

Kenwood Square, formerly Sycamore Plaza, formerly Kenwood Mall (yes, you heard me) is on the borderline of being an indoor mall. It was an early small enclosed mall when first built in the 60s, but it was "de-malled" and turned into more of a power center while retaining indoor accesses and two atriums in the early 90s due to competition from Kenwood Towne Centre across the street, which itself started as an unassuming strip mall and was converted into a traditional enclosed mall in the late 1980s. Kenwood Square has been decanting and making the interior much less tenable. The Toys R Us never had any access from the interior, and the new Dick's store has no connection to the inside either. I find that one particularly frustrating because I like to go there and to TJ Maxx, which was much easier when Dick's was inside. Now TJ Maxx and Macy's Furniture are the only large inline tenants left, with the two middle-level spaces occupied by Linens 'n Things and the old Dick's location empty.

https://casestudies.uli.org/wp-conte...12/C027012.pdf

Kenwood Towne Centre has a pretty interesting history too, though it's the premier mall of the region, so it's not going away anytime soon. Built in 1956 as a traditional strip mall called Kenwood Plaza spanning from Kenwood Road east to nearly where I-71 would be built, it had only one anchor, a McAlpin's on the east side, which is today the central part of Dillard's. A Pogue's department store was built in the parking lot near the corner of Kenwood and Montgomery in 1959, and it and McAlpin's were added to a couple of times through the 1960s and 1970s. When converted to a full interior mall in the late 1980s, the eastern half of the strip mall was demolished (except McAlpin's) to build the new food court/atrium and north wing anchored by Lazarus (lured from across the street), now Macy's, and the interior entrance side of McAlpin's was added, which as far as I can tell has at least five different sections of different ages, hence the weird split-level interior Dillard's has to deal with today. You can still see the individual stores along the north side of the west wing of the mall (Eddie Bauer, J. Crew, Disney, Oshkosh, Gymboree, Abercrombie, Talbots, etc.) in aerial photos to this day. Pogues became Ayres, then JCPenney, then Parisian, and after that closed it was demolished and rebuilt as Nordstrom in 2010. Outboard "streetscape" additions (Pottery Barn, Maggiano's, Restoration Hardware, Cheesecake Factory) were built in 2004. Then there's the whole Kenwood Collection tower, Kroger, and other nonsense on the northeast side of the property. Crazy cakes there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenwood_Towne_Centre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kenwood_Collection

The naming of these sites seems designed to create maximum confusion.

Kenwood Plaza -> Kenwood Towne Centre
Kenwood Mall -> Sycamore Plaza -> Kenwood Square
Kenwood Towne Place -> Kenwood Collection