Kennedy Mall is a

shopping mall A shopping mall (or simply mall) is 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, but in the late 1960s, i ...

located in

Dubuque, Iowa Dubuque (, ) is a city in Dubuque County, Iowa, United States, and its county seat. The population was 59,667 at the 2020 United States census. The city lies along the Mississippi River at the junction of Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin, a region ...

. It is owned by the Cafaro Company. The mall's anchor stores are Edward Jones, Shoe Carnival, Planet Fitness, Vertical Jump Park,

JCPenney Penney OpCo LLC , Trade name, doing business as JCPenney (colloquially Penney's and abbreviated JCP) is an American department store chain store, chain with 649 stores across 49 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. It is managed as part of the Catalys ...

Dick's Sporting Goods Dick's Sporting Goods, Inc. (stylized in all caps as DICK'S Sporting Goods) is an American chain of sporting goods stores founded in 1948 by Richard "Dick" Stack. It is the largest sporting goods retailer in the United States and is listed ...

Ulta Beauty Ulta Beauty, Inc., formerly known as Ulta Salon, Cosmetics & Fragrance Inc. and before 2000 as Ulta3, is an American chain of cosmetic stores headquartered in Bolingbrook, Illinois. Ulta Beauty carries both high- and low-end cosmetics, fragra ...

HomeGoods HomeGoods is a chain of home furnishing stores headquartered in Framingham, Massachusetts Framingham () is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts, United States. Incorporated in 1700, it is located in Midd ...

, and

Books-A-Million Books-A-Million, Inc., also known as BAM!, is a bookstore chain in the United States, operating 260 stores in 32 states. Stores range in size from 4,000 to 30,000 square feet and sell books, magazines, manga, collectibles, toys, technology, a ...

Description

The Kennedy Mall contains .

Anchors

Best Buy Best Buy Co., Inc. is an American multinational consumer electronics retailer headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota. Originally founded by Richard M. Schulze and James Wheeler in 1966 as an audio specialty store called Sound of Music, it was r ...

() *

() * Planet Fitness * Shoe Carnival *

* Vertical Jump Park

History

20th century

In 1964,

Montgomery Ward Montgomery Ward is the name of two successive U.S. retail corporations. The original Montgomery Ward & Co. was a mail-order business and later a department store chain that operated between 1872 and 2001; its common nickname was "Monkey Wards". ...

announced that it would move its store in Dubuque, which was located in the downtown area, out to the west end. In February 1966, rezoning of the land on which the mall was built was approved. William M. Cafaro and Associates (now Cafaro Company) of

Youngstown, Ohio Youngstown is a city in Mahoning County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Ohio, 11th-most populous city in Ohio with a population of 60,068 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. The Mahoning ...

developed the site. The mall was completed in 1968. In 1968, Younkers was opened as the Kennedy Mall's first store. This was followed by Montgomery Ward in May 1969, and Roshek's in the fall of 1970. The mall was formally opened on April 15, 1970, with

F. W. Woolworth Company The F. W. Woolworth Company (often referred to as Woolworth's or simply Woolworth) was a retail company and one of the pioneers of the five-and-dime store. It was among the most successful American and international five-and-dime businesses, se ...

operating as a junior anchor. At the time, it had sixty stores, which made it Iowa's largest enclosed mall. Soon afterward, a tornado had damaged the Dubuque area, including the mall. In the 1980s,

Younkers Younkers Inc. () is an American online retailer and former department store chain founded as a family-run dry goods business in 1856 in Keokuk, Iowa. The retailer had evolved over more than 150 years to include a presence in locations throughout ...

Sears Sears, Roebuck and Co., commonly known as Sears ( ), is an American chain of department stores and online retailer founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosen ...

, and Armstrong's would move into the Kennedy Mall. A number of renovations were made to the mall in 1989. This included opening up a food court at the northeast corner of the mall and a number of cosmetic improvements to the mall. Also, a space for

was carved out of the Armstrong Department store. Originally, there was a General Cinema movie theater with a single 795-seat auditorium located within the mall. In 1972, it was remodeled into a two-screen theater with about 300 seats in each auditorium. In the 1980s, General Cinema built a new six-screen theater named Kennedy Mall Cinema 6 in the parking lot just west of the mall to replace the theater inside the mall.

21st century

On January 21, 2014, it was announced that Sears would be closing in late April. Vertical Jump Park opened in 2016. Mindframe Theaters closed down January 1, 2017 and was replaced with Michigan-based Phoenix Theatres. In 2018, the Younkers closed, affecting ninety employees. In early 2020, Kennedy Mall partnered with Carnegie-Stout Public Library to open the Reading Corner, a community reading space inside the mall. The space closed during

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

and was later displaced by a retail store, but was reopened in February 2024. In February 2023, it was announced that Books-A-Million would be moving into half of the former Younkers store. A

took over the book store and a few other empty store fronts inside the mall. In June 2024, the mall requested zoning modifications to allow for businesses to be built in the southwestern parking lot.

References

External links

Kennedy Mall Website
{{Shopping malls in Iowa Buildings and structures in Dubuque, Iowa Economy of Dubuque, Iowa Shopping malls in Iowa Shopping malls established in 1970 Cafaro Company Tourist attractions in Dubuque, Iowa 1970 establishments in Iowa