Could Costco be coming to Muncie? Probably not, I predict, but I bet we’re getting a BJ’s.
I’ve been writing a lot about the doomed Muncie Mall lately, but its site might not stay empty for long once demolition concludes. Owner Hull Property Group plans to redevelop the property with restaurants, retail, apartments, and, most intriguingly, an unnamed “national wholesale club1” fronting McGalliard Road. Hull hasn’t said which wholesale club it might be, and I haven’t uncovered a secret lease or site plan that gives it away. Still, it’s fun to speculate. One idea that keeps jumping out at me is BJ’s Wholesale Cub.
Hull’s plans for the moribund Muncie Mall have evolved dramatically over the past year. At first, the company planned to demolish J.C. Penny to create new outlots along McGalliard2; the idea to tear down Sears and the old movie theater came later. Finally, in February, Hull announced that 527,000 square feet of the mall would come down -everything except the separately-owned Buyer’s Market building3.
There was a good reason for the change. According to Hull executive John Mulherin, three major retailers were already looking at Muncie but had no interest in locating inside the existing mall4. Demolition would free twenty-five acres and reorient the property toward McGalliard, Muncie’s primary commercial artery.
The biggest of the possible new arrivals was that “national wholesale club,” and there are basically three candidates that fit that description: Costco, Sam’s Club, and BJ’s. Costco is a flat-out no-go given its demographic requirements: 200,000+ people within five miles, and a median income of $75,000 or greater. Sam’s is more interesting, especially since there’s one in similarly-sized Kokomo and it actually considered a superstore near McGalliard and Morrison Roads thirty years ago6. Still, BJ’s keeps jumping out to me.
BJ’s was started by Zayre in 1984. Remember Zayre and its store in Muncie’s Meadows? After the Zayre brand was sold to Ames, the remainder of the company focused on TJX- now owner of TJ Maxx, Marshalls, HomeGoods, and Sierra. TJX spun off its warehouse division, including BJ’s, in 1989. After several more spinoffs and acquisitions, BJ’s has been a public company since 2018.
BJ’s entered Indiana with a Noblesville club in 2022 and now has two other stores here. More importantly, the company has demonstrated that it doesn’t require an enormous, affluent metropolitan area to open a store: in December 2025, BJ’s opened a new club and gas station in Sumter, South Carolina7. Sumter itself has only about 43,000 residents. Muncie has about 65,000, and Delaware County has more than 113,000. Sumter isn’t a perfect comparison, but its BJ’s shows that Muncie isn’t too small for one.
Muncie also punches above its weight as a regional shopping center. People from surrounding county seats like Anderson, Winchester, Hartford City, Portland, New Castle, and even western Ohio routinely come here to shop. Hull itself describes the mall as serving Delaware County and the surrounding East-Central Indiana region8. BJ’s wouldn’t need everyone in Delaware County to buy a membership. Instead, it’d need enough people throughout that broader trade area willing to make periodic stock-up trips. McGalliard Road is where many of them already go.
BJ’s physical requirements are another reason the company intrigues me. Its stores come in several sizes, but BJ’s specifically designs smaller clubs for markets that can’t support its conventional large format. That said, a typical location requires between ten and fourteen acres, including parking9. Hull expects mall demolition to free twenty-five acres. Imagine a 100,000-square-foot BJ’s facing McGalliard with a large parking lot and BJ’s Gas nearby. Depending on the format, the club could consume around half of Hull’s redevelopment area while leaving the rest available for restaurants, smaller retailers, medical uses, a hotel, or apartments, like Hull has already imagined10.
There’s even predecent for putting BJ’s on the site of a dead mall. The chain recently opened a location as part of the redevelopment of Northgate Mall in Chattanooga11. That doesn’t prove anything about Muncie, but replacing part of a mall with a BJ’s isn’t an unprecedented notion. For what it’s worth, BJ’s is also beefing up its midwestern supply chain network with a new distribution center to be located near Columbus, Ohio- just two-and-a-half hours away12.
At any rate, let’s assume Muncie’s getting a BJ’s. What might surround it? This is where I start to baselessly speculate, but Hull’s own plans provide some clues: an earlier concept included a fast-food outlot near Panera, a family restaurant farther east, two more fast-food restaurants facing Granville Avenue, and a healthcare or mixed-use building on the old Carson’s site. A second phase added a hotel and two retail buildings before the wholesale club arrived13. I’d expect the final plan to change -it already has several times- but restaurants seem like the easiest pieces to fill.
I’d hoped the family restaurant might be a relocated MCL Cafeteria, but that doesn’t seem likely after many of its restaurants -including Muncie Mall’s- closed for good earlier this year14. Could Muncie get a Freddy’s Frozen Custard? What about Chicken Salad Chick, which is beginning to build an Indiana network15? A First Watch cafe would be interesting, too, as it would generate most of its traffic before midafternoon. None of those places operate in Muncie today, and all represent the kind of smaller, outward-facing restaurant that could occupy an outlot without gobbling up too much space.
That said, I think retail is more interesting. To that end, I wonder what could join BJ’s! Muncie is a regional shopping center surrounded by rural counties, and the merchandise mix of something like Boot Barn -work boots, western wear, workwear and outdoor-oriented apparel- could be well-suited hereabouts. At about 8,000 square feet16, Hull could drop it beside BJ’s without sacrificing acres of redevelopment potential. There’s a boot-sized hole between Castleton and Fort Wayne, and maybe the Muncie Mall site can fill it.
Then, there’s Academy Sports + Outdoors. Academy operates more than 320 stores across twenty-one states. In Indiana, the chain has outposts around Indianapolis along with locations in Bloomington, Evansville, Fort Wayne, Jeffersonville, Lafayette, Mishawaka, and Terre Haute. There’s a conspicuous lack around East-Central Indiana. I wondered if Muncie was too small for Academy at first, but then I looked at Terre Haute, the seat of Vigo County.
Vigo County had an estimated 106,512 residents in 2025. Delaware County has about 113,000. Vigo County’s median household income is $52,976, while Delaware County’s is about $58,000. Vigo County recorded $2.15 billion in retail sales in 2022; Delaware County was slightly higher at about $2.21 billion.
Factor in that both cities are college towns, and those aren’t wildly different markets. Muncie comes out a little ahead, and Academy’s own description of its real-estate strategy makes the idea even more interesting: the company serves metropolitan, suburban, and smaller cities and generally favors freestanding stores and off-mall power centers17. Its average store is around 70,000 square feet, but smaller formats exist.
Anchored by a brand-new BJ’s, the site of a demolished Muncie Mall on McGalliard Road would look a lot like the kind of power-center environment Academy seems to prefer. The store’s merchandise mix also appears to be compatible with the area, even if not with Boot Barn. Hunting, fishing, camping, workwear, outdoor cooking, sporting goods, athletic shoes, and team sports aren’t exactly niche categories around here. Ball State adds thousands of potential customers for the athletic side of the business, too- even if there’s already a Dick’s nearby.
To me, the problem isn’t whether Muncie could support Academy. Hull says demolition will free about twenty-five acres. BJ’s says a typical club needs ten to fourteen acres including parking8. A 50,000- or 60,000-square-foot Academy, along with its own parking, loading docks, and circulation, could easily consume another six or eight. If you throw in BJ’s Gas, a couple of one-acre restaurant pads, some relocated stores from the mall like Maurices and Hot Topic, internal roads, stormwater retention, landscaping, and everything else a modern development needs, twenty-five acres disappears pretty quickly.
I’m obviously no expert, but a BJ’s/Academy combination probably works only if Hull develops the property as an integrated power center instead of giving each retailer its own enormous island of asphalt. Shared access would be important. Parking would need to be reasonably efficient. Still, BJ’s might need something closer to ten acres than fourteen, and Academy might need one of its smaller formats.
If those pieces line up, though, think about what could happen: BJ’s and its gas station front McGalliard. A 50,000- or 60,000-square-foot Academy sits nearby. Two or three new restaurants occupy outlots along the road. Smaller retail, medical, hotel, or service uses fill whatever pieces remain. Buyer’s Market stays exactly where it is because the colossal building is separately owned. It remains an attractive structure and not all of it appears to be in use. Maybe it can be subdivided.
If things were to happen as I predict, the old Muncie Mall property has three or more substantial anchors. It wouldn’t be the mall, but the passage of time has proven that a reconfiguration is exactly what the area needs. Muncie Mall was designed around the retail logic of 1970 that placed major anchors at the ends of long, climate-controlled corridors, stuffed dozens of smaller stores between them, and counted on foot traffic to keep the whole machine humming.
In my vision, every major tenant would be a destination. Nobody would depend on shoppers wandering past on their way to Sears or J.C. Penney. Restaurants would have exterior entrances. Retailers would face parking lots and internal streets. Customers could drive directly to whichever business brought them there, like they do at the power center portion of Kokomo’s Markland Mall.
Again, I don’t have any evidence that BJ’s, Academy, Boot Barn, or Chicken Salad Chick has signed anything in Muncie. The only thing we know is that Hull says a national wholesale club is interested in anchoring the redevelopment and that several other major retailers are looking at the Muncie market. Still, I’ll look like a genius if anything like this happens! I hope.
I’m nearly certain that Muncie won’t get Costco, but BJ’s has demonstrated a willingness to enter smaller regional markets and specifically offers smaller clubs for places that can’t support its biggest format. Academy already operates in an Indiana market whose county is slightly smaller and less affluent than Delaware is. Both companies favor the kind of outward-facing development that demolishing Muncie Mall would create. For years, the question at Muncie Mall was which store would leave next. Soon, we might finally get to start wondering which ones are coming!
Lead Costco image courtesy Wikimedia user Ambrosia LaFluer under the CC BY 2.0 license
Sources Cited
1 Wiechmann, S. (2026, February 26). Muncie Mall to be fully demolished. Indiana Public Radio [Muncie]. Web. Retrieved September 17, 2026.
2 Wiechmann, S. (2025, June 30). Muncie commission approves money to begin demolishing part of Muncie Mall. Indiana Public Radio [Muncie]. Web. Retrieved September 17, 2026
3 (See footnote 1).
4 (See footnote 1).
5 Costco Wholesale (n.d.). Gallelli Real Estate [Roseville]. Web. Retrieved September 17, 2026.
6 Mogollon, C.D. (1994, February 26). Tax districts OK’d for Sam’s Club, mall projects. The Muncie Star. p. 13.
7 Trainor, C. (2025, December 3). BJ’s Wholesale Club has set an opening for a new SC store. Here’s when it debuts. The State [Columbia]. web. Retrieved September 17, 2026.
8 Muncie Mall (n.d.). Hull Property Group [Augusta]. Web. Retrieved September 17, 2026.
9 BJ’s Wholesale Club – 10-K annual report (2025). BJ’s Wholesale Club [Marlborough]. Web. Retrieved September 17, 2026.
10 (See footnote 1).
11 Leon, P. (2025, May 1). Ground Broken On The Site Of A New BJ’s Wholesale Club At Northgate Mall. The Pulse [Chattanooga]. Web. Retrieved September 17, 2026.
12 BJ’s Wholesale Club Announces Ohio Distribution Center to Accommodate Growth (2025, January 28). BJ’s Wholesale Club [Marlborough]. Web. Retrieved September 17, 2026.
13 (See footnote 2).
14 Monroe, H. (2026, March 18). MCL Restaurant closing multiple locations in central Indiana, elsewhere. FOX59 [Indianapolis]. Web. Retrieved September 17, 2026.
15 Chicken Salad Chick Indiana Location Dataset (n.d.). CREHQ. GrounfRoof, LLC [New York]. Web. Retrieved September 17, 2026.
16 Boot Barn (n.d.). The Boulder Group [Wilmette]. Web. Retrieved September 17, 2026.
17 Corporate Profile (n.d.). Academy Sports + Outdoors [Harris County]. Web. Retrieved September 17, 2026.
Man, spoken like an urban planner or market analyst! Nice assessment and write-up.