My niece came down for Labor Day. Taking her home meant heading through Defiance, Ohio, and I’d heard Reddit rumors of an irresistible dead mall there. Naturally, there was no way I was driving through town without stopping to investigate! What I found, though, wasn’t the retail graveyard I’d expected. Reddit was wrong.
Defiance sits in Ohio’s northwestern corner, about halfway between Fort Wayne and Toledo. I’d been there before to photograph what used to be the world’s ugliest courthouse, and I knew the city was home to a small private college. Somehow, though, I’d never realized it had a mall! I haven’t visited every shopping center within striking distance, but with a population of only about 17,000, Defiance may be the smallest city to feature an enclosed mall within two hours of my house.
That mall is Northtowne, and researching it proved almost as interesting as wandering through its halls. There’s precious little information about the place online beyond a few scattered social media posts. There’s no website to speak of. It doesn’t even have a Wikipedia entry! Fortunately, obscurity has never stopped me before. Unfortunately, perhaps, for you, it’s time for a lengthy tour.
Here’s a surprising fact about Northtowne: the mall is a relative newcomer. Countless enclosed malls were products of the 1960s and 70s, but this one didn’t open until 19861! Developed by the Isaac Building Company of nearby Bryan2, the 300,000-square-foot mall wasn’t quite finished when shoppers first arrived. Only twelve stores featured at its grand opening, including anchor Elder-Beerman. A five-screen cinema near center court remained months away from completion3, and an opening-day report joked that “workers nearly outnumbered the shoppers.” adding, “what’s a mall without construction and/or remodeling4?”
Eventually, Northtowne filled out. Elder-Beerman and the cinema occupied the middle of the complex, while J.C. Penney anchored its south end5. Ames, the north anchor, was actually older than the mall: it began as a freestanding Murphy’s Mart before Ames bought G.C. Murphy in 19856.
Between the anchors, Northtowne eventually offered a representative slice of late-1980s mall life: Cato, Central Travel Agency, Claire’s Boutique, Deb, El-Bee Shoes, Fanny Farmer, Fashion Bug Plus, Gateway Books, GNC, Hawk’s, House of Cards, Italian Affair, Jolly Time Amusements, Keidan’s Jewelry, Kinney Shoes, Maurices, National Record Mart, Regis Beauty Salon, Revco Drug, Royal Optical, Sox Plus, Sycamore, and Tri-State Music were all early tenants7. For a small city like Defiance, Northtowne was a substantial shopping destination.
The mall’s traditional anchors eventually disappeared, but their buildings didn’t. Ames appears to have closed in 1997, and Sears opened in its remodeled space the following year8. Sears lasted until 20169, and about three-fifths of its 87,000-square-foot store became Hobby Lobby in 201910.
In 2021, the remainder of the cavernous space was eventually converted into Family Farm and Home, a Michigan-based retailer similar to Rural King or Runnings. Both stores remain busy-looking pieces of the mall from the outside, but neither provides access to the concourse within.
Elder-Beerman followed Sears into history in 2018, when parent company Bon-Ton announced plans to close forty-two stores including another at the nearby mall in Adrian, Michigan11. Fortunately, the anchor didn’t stay empty for long: Xperience Church, a seven-year-old congregation meeting at the Defiance YMCA, moved in during 201912.
J.C. Penney was the last of Northtowne’s original anchors to leave. It closed in 2020 alongside 153 other locations, including my hometown store at Muncie Mall13. Ollie’s Bargain Outlet moved into the former Penney’s the following year14. Like Hobby Lobby and FF&H at the opposite end, Ollie’s has no entrance into the mall itself.
First owned by National Theatre Corporation, the mall’s five-screen cinema was later purchased by Regal Cinemas. At some point, the complex was converted to a nine-plex. Golden Star Theatres eventually took over before the complex was shuttered in 202215. A year later, Phoenix Theatres of Michigan spent more than a million dollars to reopen the cinema16. It’s been a major draw to Northtowne ever since.
Two more stores -Dunham’s Sports and Marshalls- serve as junior anchors at Northtowne. The 24,000-square-foot Marshalls opened in 201517 in a space most recently home to Señor Gringo’s Mexican Grill and Cantina along with several other storefronts18. Dunhams came earlier, in 201219. My understanding is that combined several of the mall’s inline spaces.
My mom was with me on this trip, and we walked into Northtowne from its main entrance facing North Clinton Street. To the right, we saw a Planet Fitness that opened in an old Dollar Tree -you hate to see one of those in a mall- and a purse store called Euphoria in 201820. I get the impression that the area was originally occupied by Revco.
This enormous directional sign pointed shoppers toward Marshalls’ interior entrance from just left of the main entry. Marshalls was packed when I visited, and from what I could tell, it swallowed maybe three old inline storefronts along with Señor Gringo’s when it came online eleven years ago. The lettering didn’t seem necessary since Marshalls sat just around the corner, but who am I? The signage police?
Northtowne’s center court sat just beyond Planet Fitness, the bizarre Marshalls sign, and a Bath & Body Works that still sported its rustic storefront. The first thing that caught my eye, though, was underfoot: Northtowne still has its original-style tiled mall floor! In my experience, malls limping through their final years are almost inevitably covered in cheap, dreary carpet. Not Northtowne! Defiance’s mall still has plenty of hard, shiny tile, a surprising touch for a place Reddit had led me to believe was on life support.
Fortunately, the surprises continued overhead: old-fashioned streetlights stood right in the middle of the concourse, while circular skylights seemed to pop up wherever we went. Between the tile, the skylights, and all that natural light, Northtowne was far brighter and more inviting than a mall this “dead” had any business being.
Straight ahead, Northtowne’s Center Court opened into a gathering space anchored by a stage and a planter. The concrete trough looked a little overbuilt, and it turns out there’s a reason: a Reddit post from 2022 shows that it used to be a fountain21! I would have loved to see it in action, but Northtowne’s went dry by 2024. It’s still an attractive centerpiece, I guess, but knowing its past made the arragement underwhelming22. Northtowne management: I know you’re reading. Bring back the fountain!
Claire’s was one of Northtowne Mall’s original tenants, and it stuck around for nearly forty years. Generations of local kids and teenagers surely passed through its doors for cheap jewelry, accessories, and the chain’s famous offer of free ear piercing with the purchase of a starter set. Unfortunately, Claire’s long run at Northtowne finally ended after its parent company declared bankruptcy in 202523.
Shoe Department occupied one of Northtowne’s largest inline spaces, with a wide storefront and enough square footage to nearly qualify as a junior anchor of its own. The brand is part of Shoe Show, a Concord, North Carolina-based retailer that operates more than a thousand stores across the country under a surprisingly long list of names, including Shoe Show, Shoe Dept., Shoe Dept. Encore, Shoebilee!, Burlington Shoes, and Shoe Show Mega. At Northtowne, its sizable presence was another reminder that, despite all the talk of a dead mall, a lot of retail was still hanging on.
This empty space near Shoe Dept. is the ghost of We’re Rolling Pretzel Company. Unfortunately, it wasn’t alone in its vacancy: this part of Northtowne featured several shuttered storefronts, particularly as I worked my way toward the mall’s northwestern corner. Most had at least been neatly sealed off, but We’re Rolling looked like someone had simply grabbed a roll of plastic, covered what they could, and called it a day.
Here’s Dunham’s, one of Northtowne’s most substantial tenants. The sporting goods store dates to 1937, when it started as a small bait-and-tackle shop in Michigan. Today, it operates about 260 outposts across twenty-six states! Lately, Dunham’s seems to have developed a knack for breathing new life into vacant department-store anchors. That makes its comparatively modest footprint at Northtowne a little unusual.
Case in point: Dunham’s found a use for the old Sears entrance that connects to Hobby Lobby. Instead of leaving the abandoned entryway to collect dust, Dunham’s turned it into an improvised overflow showroom for kayaks, bicycles, and other bulky merchandise. It’s hardly an elegant reuse, but I have to give the store credit for putting otherwise dead space to work. Look past the merchandise, though, and the old tile, railings, and unusually wide entrance give the game away. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell if I was detecting a Sears labelscar or not.
Aside from USA Nails, which was closed for Labor Day, every storefront clustered in Northtowne’s western concourse was empty. Shuttered storefronts lined both sides of the corridor while a few old kiddie rides, benches, streetlights, and cheerful banners remained behind. Nevertheless, with sunlight still pouring through the skylights and reflecting off the polished tile, the area looked relatively well-kept. Unfortunately, there was nothing left to shop for.
There was nothing left to shop for, I mean, unless you had a few quarters or tickets to burn at The Amazing Space, perhaps the saddest, smallest arcade I’ve ever stumbled across. Tucked into a single former storefront, the place amounted to a sparse collection of amusements beneath a dated sign. The Amazing Space was operated by Fort Wayne’s Playfair Group, which ran small arcades like this in malls and shopping centers for years before the company was acquired by Cincinnati-based Pioneer Vending in 202324. Is a space still amazing if its contents aren’t? Philosophers and fools have been debating that question for years.
Reddit told me that Northtowne’s food court wasn’t to be missed, and I immediately understood why once I saw it. The place was frozen in time, a whimsical relic from the era when malls seemed to put real effort into making a bite to eat seem like an event. An enormous circular skylight, far bigger and more dramatic than the others scattered throughout Northtowne, flooded a sunken dining area with natural light. Unfortunately, the upper mezzanine was closed and blocked off by a bench.
Nearly all of Northtowne’s elaborate food-court infrastructure remained intact. Unfortunately, there was no longer much reason for any of it: by the time I visited, not a single restaurant was left! The contrast was almost surreal: Northtowne’s architects had created one of the mall’s grandest spaces and, decades later, the architecture was still waiting for crowds that no longer came. The food court may have been Northtowne’s most dramatic space. By far, it was its strangest.
That said, the emptiness of Northtowne’s food court appears to be recent development. In 2024, the awkwardly named It Is Not Just Pizza opened alongside Jack’s Kitchen to join longtime mall fixture Hot Rice25, a Chinese restaurant I was anxious to try. By the time I arrived, though, all three were dark. Strangely, a small group sat snacking together at one of the tables. Where they’d managed to find their food was anyone’s guess!
Here’s Hot Rice. I was disappointed to find it empty during my visit, but a later check of Northtowne’s Facebook page revealed that it was simply closed for Labor Day. Crisis averted! Next time I’m in Defiance, I’ll make a special trip back for the Ku Pow Shrimp and Cashew Chicken. For what it’s worth, we settled for Panda Express on our way out of town. Something tells me Hot Rice would have been the better choice.
Phoenix Theatres is probably the reason that most people to venture this far into Northtowne Mall. An expanded lobby, heated reclining seats with a whopping seventy-five inches of legroom, Dolby Atmos sound, and 4K projection make Phoenix seem worlds removed from the aging, decrepit theater it replaced. In a wing filled with empty of what used to be, the cinema seems focused on what comes next.
The theater experience spills into Northtowne’s westernmost corridor, where Phoenix shares space with guest services, the mall office, restrooms, a photo booth, and an exterior entrance. One thing was strangely absent, though: movie posters. Instead of plastering the hallway with coming attractions or advertising whatever was playing that day, Phoenix promoted itself. It struck me as a little odd at first, but then again, how many people still wander into a movie theater with absolutely no idea what they came to see?
Mom and I looped around. Just south of the theater complex, a short side hall once led shoppers to secondary entrances for Elder-Beerman and Shoe Dept. Today, it goes nowhere. The old entrance has been sealed behind a blank wall, leaving the hallway empty except for one unexpected roadblock: an antique fire truck. Despite a lack of contextual clues, the antique auto wasn’t just some random piece of firefighting equipment. It was actually a 1926 Defiance, built in town by the Turnbull Motor Truck and Wagon Company26.
Back at center court, here’s the mallside entrance to Xperience Church in the old Elder-Beerman. I’ve seen churches in other mall anchors, and I’ve always wondered how the arrangement works in practice. Obviously, the mall gets a tenant and the church gets plenty of space, but does the congregation spill into the concourse afterward and stop at USA Nails or Dunham’s on the way home? What about the Amazing Space? Do church services let out while the mall itself is open? Apparently, they do: The Google says Xperience holds a service at 11:15 and the mall opens forty-five minutes later.
Even though its food court sits barren, Northtowne Mall isn’t entirely devoid of something to eat. Across from Bath & Body Works, Simply from Scratch Bakery keeps the treats coming in a storefront once home to Go Wireless and, later, a tea and coffee shop. I didn’t stop for a mini cheesecake, dirty soda, or intriguingly-named cookie butter Croffle when I visited, but after checking the place out on Facebook, I’m starting to wish I had!
Including Bath & Body Works, Dunham’s, Marshalls, and Shoe Dept., I counted five national store brands inside Northtowne Mall. Maurices was one of them. I have never set foot inside a single one of the ninety-five-year-old chain’s slate of about a thousand stores, but they’re a reliable mall presence with inviting storefront architecture to boot.
Most of Northtowne’s occupied storefronts have been taken over by local businesses and organizations, and Just Be Original Fine Arts Academy is a great example. Situated in the former rue21 just south of Maurices, the studio hosts arts and crafts classes, birthday parties, fundraisers, and other creative events. Just Be Original is the kind of unconventional tenant that seems increasingly at home in malls like Northtowne.
The old JCPenney entrance still looms over the south end of Northtowne’s concourse, but don’t expect to walk through it. Ollie’s occupies the former anchor on the other side and sealed off its interior entrance, forcing shoppers to come and go from the parking lot. I’ve seen the same thing at other struggling malls and always wondered why a replacement anchor would deliberately cut itself off from the building it supposedly anchors. Apparently, it’s not unusual27 but at Northtowne, the result is a little surreal! Three artificial trees now stand guard over a blank white wall.
Last Man Standing is a music store that also sells DVDs, Blu-Rays, comics, video games, and t-shirts. Believe it or not, it sits in a space once occupied by Bookland and, later, a small Books-A-Million! Last Man Standing store says it boasts Ohio’s biggest selection of Hard Rock & Metal CDs! Next time, after Hot Rice, I’ll stop in to see if they’ve got the West German target pressing of Shout at the Devil.
After a quick walk past Marshalls, we wound up right back where we started at Northtowne Mall’s Center Court. By then, I’d managed to photograph nearly every storefront in the place. A few escaped me -Central Travel, Hawk’s Clothing, Luna Moon, and Tim’s Sports Cards- but otherwise, I’d documented just about everything there was to see. Standing in the middle of the mall and scrolling through all those photos, I started trying to reconcile the Northtowne I’d just explored with the “dead mall” I’d been promised online. The two didn’t quite match.
Northtowne certainly looks dead in places. Its empty food court is downright liminal, several storefronts have been vacant long enough to become time capsules, and former anchors like JCPenney and Sears have been walled off from the concourse even though their spaces have found new uses. That said, apearances can be deceiving. By my count, Northtowne has about 36 leasable spaces, including anchors that can no longer be accessed from inside the mall. Twenty-two of them are occupied. That works out to 61 percent, hardly a picture of perfect health but substantially better than I expected after reading about the place online.
More importantly, those numbers don’t tell the whole story. Most of Northtowne’s vacancies are small inline storefronts, while most of its largest spaces remain productive. Marshalls was booming during my visit. Dunham’s fills the old Sears. Ollie’s has repurposed JCPenney, even if it sealed itself off from the mall. Phoenix Theatres transformed the old cinema, and Bath & Body Works, Maurices, Shoe Dept., and a surprising collection of local businesses continue to draw people inside. A mall with an empty food court and plenty of dark storefronts certainly isn’t thriving in the traditional sense, but neither is it an abandoned retail corpse waiting for the bulldozers like Muncie’s.
Even if nearly forty percent of its storefronts are vacant, Northtowne seems determined to give people reasons to come back. A bulletin board near the main entrance was crammed with posters for upcoming events: a farmers market, sports-card and collectibles shows, a craft and vendor show, a patriotic celebration, and more. None of those things will turn Northtowne back into the bustling regional shopping center it once was, but they show that somebody is still trying. In an era when truly dead malls feel abandoned long before they actually close, Northtowne is filling its calendar, inviting vendors inside, and attempting to make itself useful to the community. It’s trying its hardest!
That was the conclusion I kept coming back to as I stood in Center Court: Northtowne is struggling, but “dead” sells it short. If anything, it seems to be doing what a lot of small-town malls have been forced to do- shrink, adapt, and replace vanished national chains with whatever businesses, organizations, and events can make the space work. Those Reddit dingbats had prepared me for a retail graveyard. What I found was something much more interesting: a mall that’s battered, weird, and undeniably diminished, but still very much alive. Next time I’ll hit up Hot Rice and Last Man Standing!
Sources Cited
1 Wilkinson, R. (1986, April 3). Shoppers mob city’s new mall. The Crescent-News [Defiance]. p. 1.
2 Groundbreaking at Northtowne (1985, July 9). The Bryan Times. p. 3.
3 (See footnote 1).
4 Haberland, D. (1986, April 3). Defiance’s new mall gets ‘thumbs up’ from shoppers. The Crescent-News [Defiance]. p. 1.
5 (See footnote 4).
6 Murphy’s acquired by Ames company (1985, April 25). The Bucyrus Telegraph-Forum. p. 1.
7 Mall opens (1986, April 2). The Napoleon Northwest-Signal. p. 14.
8 Nicely, L. (2016, May 4). Sears in Defiance to close. The Crescent-News [Defiance]. Web. Retrieved September 8, 2026.
9 (See footnote 8).
10 Hobby Lobby celebrates grand opening of Defiance store (2019, Augusst 16). The Crescent-News [Defiance]. Web. Retrieved September 8, 2026.
11 Elder-Beerman closing stores in Ohio and Michigan (2018, February 1). WTOL [Toledo]. Web. Retrieved September 8, 2026.
12 Associate Pastor (n.d.). One 39. Web. Retrieved September 8, 2026.
13 JCPenney to close stores in Muncie, Defiance; Glenbrook spared (2020, June 5). WANE [Fort Wayne]. Web. Retrieved September 8, 2026.
14 Ollie’s grand opening Wednesday (2021, August 26). The Crescent-News [Defiance]. Web. Retrieved September 8, 2026.
15 Northtowne Mall Theatre (n.d.). Cinema Treasures. Web. Retrieved September 8, 2026.
16 Croup, J. (2022, September 18). Movie theater to return to Northtowne Mall in Defiance. WTVG [Toledo]. Web. Retrieved September 8, 2026.
17 Marshalls opens in Defiance (2015, March 5). The Bryan Times. Web. Retrieved September 8, 2026.
18 Northtowne Mall- (Defiance, OH) (2014, December 27). Trip To The Mall. Web. Retrieved September 8, 2026.
19 Dunham’s Sports moves to Northtowne Mall in Defiance, Ohio (2012, September 15). The Crescent-News [Defiance]. Web. Retrieved September 8, 2026.
20 Froelich, M. (2018, May 24). Planet Fitness to open facility in Defiance’s Northtowne Mall. The Crescent-News [Defiance]. Web. Retrieved September 8, 2026.
21 u/Distinct_Athlete_206 (2022). I went back and got more photos of the Northtowne Mall in Defiance, Ohio. [Online forum post]. Reddit.
22 U/critterwave (2024). Northtowne Mall has its quirks (Defiance, OH). [Online forum post]. Reddit.
23 Two Claire’s stores set to close in northwest Ohio (2025, August 27). WTOL [Toledo]. Web. Retrieved September 11, 2026.
24 Pioneer Vending (2023, April 17). Pioneer Vending acquires family-owned The Playfair Group in newest acquisition. Pioneer Vending [Cincinnati]. Web. Retrieved September 12, 2026.
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27 Milligan, B. (2025, February 14). Garfield Township Tables Ollie’s Application for GT Mall. The Ticker [Traverse City]. Web. Retrieved September 13, 2026.
28 Books-A-Million (n.d.). World Orgs. Web. Retrieved September 13, 2026.
It would be interesting to learn about the rental terms for a church in a mall. Presumably there is no requirement to be open during all mall hours, but is there a rental amount that makes sense for a church that is probably open only on Sundays?
I wondered that too but didn’t really get into it since this post was so long. It looks like they have auxiliary stuff/group meetings going on during mall hours and participate in mallwide events. I guess some rent is better than none?
Free space for the church might make for an attractive tax deduction for the mall owner!
For sure!