Polaris Fashion Place is a two level

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 ...

and surrounding retail plaza serving Columbus,

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

, United States. The mall, owned locally by

Washington Prime Group Washington Prime Group Inc. is an American real estate investment trust that invests in shopping centers. The company is organized in Indiana with its headquarters in Columbus, Ohio. From January 2015 to September 2016, the company had the name WP ...

, is located off

Interstate 71 Interstate 71 (I-71) is a north–south Interstate Highway in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes/Midwestern and Southeastern region of the United States. Its southern terminus is at an interchange with Interstate 64 in Kentucky, I-64 and ...

on Polaris Parkway in Delaware County just to the north of the boundary between Delaware and Franklin County. The mall features five anchor stores,

Saks Fifth Avenue Saks Fifth Avenue (originally Saks & Company; colloquially Saks) is an American luxury department store chain headquartered in New York City and founded by Andrew Saks. The original store opened in the F Street shopping district of Washington ...

, Von Maur,

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 ...

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 a combination of Dick's Sporting Goods/Public Lands, as well as an outdoor promenade which includes Forever 21,

Dave & Buster's Dave & Buster's is an American restaurant and entertainment business headquartered in Dallas. Each Dave & Buster's has a full-service restaurant and a video arcade. As of October 2022, the company has 151 locations in the United States and two ...

, and Barnes & Noble. The mall is part of the much larger 1200 acre POLARIS Centers of Commerce real estate development in northern Columbus. This development includes the McCoy Center, the Polaris Founder's Park along with over a hundred other commercial and residential developments.

History

Glimcher Realty Trust began construction on Polaris Fashion Place in June 2000. The mall opened in November 2001 with 146 inline tenants. The developers chose to include several tenants which were lacking in the market, including four of the seven anchor stores:

Kaufmann's Kaufmann's was a department store that originated in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Summary The store was owned in the early 20th century by Edgar J. Kaufmann, patron of the famous Fallingwater house. In the post-war years, the store became a regio ...

, The Great Indoors,

Lord & Taylor Lord & Taylor was the oldest brick and mortar department store in the United States, in business from 1826 to 2020. The brand was purchased during former owner Le Tote's 2020 liquidation bankruptcy and relaunched by new owner, Saadia Group, as ...

, and

. The other three anchors were

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 ...

and Lazarus; all three relocated from Northland Mall, which closed on October 31, 2002 following the loss of its remaining inline tenants and the Northland Mall was demolished in February 2004. In 2003, the Lazarus store was dual-branded as Lazarus-

, and then to just Macy's in 2005. After the 2006 acquisition by Federated Stores (now

Macy's, Inc. Macy's, Inc. (originally Federated Department Stores, Inc.) is an American conglomerate holding company. Upon its establishment, Federated held ownership of the regional department store chains Abraham & Straus, Lazarus, Filene's, and Shillito' ...

) of Kaufmann's parent company,

May Department Stores Company The May Department Stores Company was an American department store holding company, formerly headquartered in downtown St. Louis, Missouri. It was founded in Leadville, Colorado, by David May in 1877, moving to St. Louis in 1905. After many ...

, the Kaufmann's store was shuttered and sold to Glimcher for redevelopment. In 2007, the store was demolished for an outdoor expansion comprising Barnes & Noble, Forever 21 and several restaurants, including Benihana,

The Cheesecake Factory The Cheesecake Factory Incorporated is an American restaurant company and distributor of cheesecakes based in the United States. The company operates 219 full-service restaurants: 206 under The Cheesecake Factory brand and 13 under the Grand Lux C ...

and

. This concourse opened in 2008. Lord & Taylor was repositioned and shuttered entirely in 2004. It was replaced with Von Maur, whose location at the mall is also the first in the state. On February 22, 2012,

Sears Holdings Corporation Sears Holdings Corporation was an American holding company headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. It was the parent company of the chain stores Kmart and Sears and was founded after the former purchased the latter in 2005. It was the 20th- ...

announced it would be closing all 9 of its Great Indoors. In March 2015 it was announced that the space would be replaced by a new Dick's Sporting Goods and

Field & Stream ''Field & Stream'' (''F&S'' for short) is an American online magazine focusing on hunting, fishing and other outdoor activities. The magazine was a print publication between 1895 and 2015 and became an online-only publication from 2020. History ...

(now Public Lands) by October 2015. In 2019, Sears closed. In 2020, it was announced that the space will be raised for a mixed-use development. In March 2021, the mall saw two separate shooting incidents within the interior corridors, on March 3 and 15. These were the first such incidents in the mall's history.

References

External links

* {{Shopping malls in Ohio Shopping malls in Columbus, Ohio Shopping malls established in 2001 Washington Prime Group 2001 establishments in Ohio