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A Grant County News page on Facebook with 60,000 followers and a 96% recommendation rate says that the Roses discount department store at Marion’s shuttered Five Points Mall has closed for good¹. If true, the news follows a lengthy temporary closure as store and mall management dealt with the aging building’s condition. Given the state of Five Points, I can’t say I’m shocked.

I’d never heard of Roses before I stumbled across Marion’s years ago. Founded in 1915 by Paul Howard Rose in Henderson, North Carolina², the chain expanded to five stores by 1918³ as, essentially, a southern counterpart to discounters like Woolworth, Kresge, and McCrory. By the time it incorporated in 1927, Roses 5-10-25c Stores had about thirty locations. It soon spread further, mostly to small towns, in Tennessee and Georgia. By 1942, the company had ballooned into Virginia with 119 stores in five states⁴.

Rose’s biggest transformation came around 1960, when it began moving beyond the traditional downtown five-and-dime format and opening much larger discount stores⁵. That put it in the same broad retail movement that produced Kmart, Target, Zayre, and other discount department stores. Unfortunately, Rose’s successful model was upset by Walmart’s move into its territory during the eighties. Sam Walton’s much larger format caught Rose’s -by then with 215 stores- flat-footed⁶ and led the company to declare bankruptcy⁷. After Fred’s, Inc. backed out of a deal to buy the struggling chain, Variety Wholesalers of Raleigh picked it up for $15.3 million in 1997⁸. 

Rose’s (or was it Roses? The store didn’t seem like the kind of place that could afford to splurge on an apostrophe) made its way to Indiana in 2012, when it moved into the former Steve & Barry’s space at Marion’s Five Points Mall⁹. Built in 1978, the 80,000-square-foot building it entered was the first expansion of what was then called North Park Plaza and was originally home to Hills¹⁰. Hills became Ames in 1999¹¹. After Ames closed in 2001, Steve & Barry’s opened up three years later¹². 

My brother and I actually went into the Marion Roses once, back in 2018, as Five Points Mall was murmuring its death rattle. I can’t remember what merchandise we saw there, but much of it hung from old-school pegboard shelves beneath what seemed like an eighth of an inch of dust. I didn’t take any pictures inside or calibrate my calipers to verify my findings, but I did photograph Roses’ mall-facing entrance from the north. Nearby, Planet Fitness had recently taken over four former storefronts¹³ and added its own exterior entrance¹⁴.

Aside from Roses, Planet Fitness, and an Applebee’s restaurant, the interior of Five Points Mall was boarded up and shuttered just weeks after we visited¹⁵. Applebee’s moved out earlier this year, and the Roses closure leaves Planet Fitness the last business at Five Points. A variety of optimistic plans have emerged for the mall, but none seem to have stuck so far.  As for Roses, I’m not sure what will happen. Not counting Marion’s, the Hoosier state is home to two more: Anderson’s River Ridge Plaza location was flooded yesterday¹⁶, and I didn’t even know the store at 7201 Pendleton Pike in an old Indianapolis Kmart even existed! 

Roses has survived a lot over the past hundred-and-eleven years, from the decline of the five-and-dime to Wal-Mart, bankruptcy, and the disappearance of countless competitors. Still, something is fitting about the store hanging on almost until the bitter end in Marion. Hills, Ames, and Steve & Barry’s all came and went before Roses spent fourteen years selling cheap merchandise from dusty pegboard shelves. Now it’s gone, too. Whatever happens to Roses in Indiana, nearly half a century of discount retail has apparently come to an end in that corner of Five Points Mall.

Sources Cited
1 Channel 27 News and Entertainment, Grant County (2026, August 14). ROSES DISCOUNT STORE SAYS IT IS CLOSING FOR GOOD IN MARION. For a while, many in the community have been [Status]. Facebook.
2 Rose Opens Another Store Here Today (1927, December 15). The Albemarle Press. Pp. 1-8. 
3 Conley, M. (2017, October 28). Coming up Roses: Store with long local history to hold grand opening. McDowell News. Web. Retrieved August 14, 2026.
4 Roses’ Store Handles Big Supply of Goods (1942, August 27). The Covington Virginian. p. 13. 
5 Variety Wholesalers, Inc. – Company Profile, Information, Business Description, History, Background Information on Variety Wholesalers, Inc. (n.d.). Reference for Business. Web. Retrieved August 14, 2026. 
6 Rose’s Files For Bankruptcy (1993, September 8). The Roanoke Times. P. B-6. 
7 (See footnote 6).
8 Michael, K. (1997, October 28). Raleigh firm bids $15.3M for Rose’s.  The Durham Herald-Sun. p. 13. 
9 Wright, M. (2012, March 24). Coming up Roses for shoppers. The Marion Chronicle-Tribune. p. 1. 
10 Hill’s store an old-timer at the mall (1978, November 15). The Marion Chronicle-Tribune. p. 62. 
11 Hills preparing for change to Ames (1999, May 20). The Marion Chronicle-Tribune. p. 8. 
12 Kipp, R. (2004, October 5). New anchor store commits to mall. The Marion Chronicle-Tribune. p. 1.
13 Watson, N. (2017, September 16). Planet Fitness work begins. The Marion Chronicle-Tribune. p. 1.|
14 Smelser, A. (2017, November 12). Planet Fitness creating optimism at Five Points. The Marion Chronicle-Tribune. p. 25.
15 Cox, H. (2019, January 9). Shoebilee leaves Five Points Mall. The Marion Chronicle-Tribune. p. 1. 15
16 Monroe, H. (2026, August 14). Flooding in Anderson leads to evacuations. FOX59 [Indianapolis]. Web. Retrieved August 14, 2026.