When I was a kid, I remember heading toward my dad’s house near Elkhart and passing a Walmart on the right just as another Walmart appeared on the left. To my young mind, Goshen must have been some kind of booming metropolis if it needed two of the superstores practically across the street from each other! Before long, though, the older one was replaced by a movie theater. Today, that same building is a church. It’s funny how places reinvent themselves.

I wrote about the forlorn, mostly vacant Washington Square Mall back in April, and my verdict wasn’t pretty. Since then, though, a months-long effort to imagine a future for the property has reached its first major milestone. Monday evening, planners unveiled an ambitious vision for the property’s future. Could one of Indiana’s most troubled malls actually have one of those?