The rubble from Muncie Mall’s old Sears had hardly settled before Hull Property Group’s demolition crew turned its attention to J.C. Penney. As of yesterday, another longtime anchor is coming down! Here’s a look back at the history of another store that served generations of Muncie shoppers.
The J.C. Penney at Muncie Mall started as W.T. Grant. Melvin Simon and Associates first announced the project in 19671 and fully revealed their vision for the sprawling new shopping center at the corner of East McGalliard Road and State Road 3 the following year. A massive Sears would anchor the northeast end, while Grant’s would hold down the fort to the southwest2. Between them, a collection of smaller shops would fill out the enclosed mall, creating a shopping destination unlike anything Muncie had seen before.
Sears needs little introduction from me since I’ve written about it extensively. Grant’s, on the other hand, has been out of business for fifty years. The chain got its start in 1906, when William Thomas Grant opened a twenty-five-cent store in Lynn, Massachusetts. His strategy was simple: keep prices low, accept modest profit margins, and make up the difference through volume. It worked3: over the following decades, Grant’s grew into a powerhouse, eventually approaching $100 million in annual sales. That’s nearly $2 billion in today’s money, roughly on par with In-N-Out Burger4 and a whole slew of tech companies I’ve never heard of.
Grant’s store at Muncie Mall was enormous; five times larger than its first Muncie store in Northwest Plaza that opened in 1957. The 110,000-square-foot emporium came online in 1970 with nearly two and a half miles of display counters. Aside from its many departments, Grant’s at the mall also featured parking for a thousand cars and a 110-seat Bradford House restaurant5.
Unfortunately, a number of factors led to Grant’s downfall just five years after it opened at the mall. For starters, the company overextended itself by opening 376 new stores between 1969 and 1973. Many were in bad locations, and Grant’s even sued some of its own executives for allegedly accepting bribes in connection with unfavorable leases6! The company also struggled to grow past its reputation as a discounter when it moved upmarket in an attempt to compete with Sears and J.C. Penney7. Finally, Grant’s credit program was a financial disaster8. The chain -the nation’s 17th-largest retailer- declared bankruptcy in 1975 with assets of $1.3 million and liabilities of more than $1 billion9.
Muncie’s Grant’s stores at the Mall and Southway Plaza both closed on November 1, 1975, before briefly reopening on November 19th to liquidate their remaining inventory10. Fortunately, the mall’s enormous vacancy didn’t last long. After an extensive renovation, J.C. Penney relocated from its longtime downtown home at Mulberry and Charles Streets to the former Grant’s space and opened on January 19, 197111.
At 106,000 square feet, the new J.C. Penney dwarfed its previous Muncie location. The additional space allowed the retailer to nearly double the size of its forty-one existing departments while introducing new ones devoted to luggage, records and tapes, and Hallmark cards. The store also featured a beauty shop (something its predecessor had never offered), along with a 100-seat Coffee Shop12. Penney’s arrival coincided with the opening of a new L.S. Ayres in the mall’s former Britt’s space, prompting renovations extensive enough to warrant a rededication ceremony. The occasion was such a big deal that Ed McMahon of The Tonight Show even came to Muncie to help celebrate13.
Unlike Grant’s, J.C. Penney was a success at Muncie Mall for many years. Also unlike Grant’s, which collapsed pretty quickly, J.C. Penney struggled for nearly two decades before it filed for bankruptcy in 2020. Unfortunately, its problems were both external and self-inflicted: the American retail environment was changing, sure, but management decisions made those challenges far worse. For one thing, traditional department stores faced increasing pressure from Walmart, Target, Kohl’s, and other speciality retailers during the early 2000s. J.C. Penney wasn’t as cheap as Walmart, wasn’t as fashionable as the specialty chains, and wasn’t as upscale as the higher-end stores14.
Furthermore, Penney’s dependence on traditional malls eventually became a liability. As consumers increasingly shopped online or at standalone stores and power centers, Penney’s position as an interior anchor tenant became less of an advantage. We all know how declining mall traffic hurt sales at the stores that remained, while the increasing store closures that resulted led to traffic declining even more. It was a vicious cycle.
Perhaps the most consequential mistake in Penney’s modern history, though, was the company’s introduction of “Fair and Square” pricing in 2012. Instead of offering frequent sales, coupons, and promotions, Penney would charge supposedly straightforward, everyday prices. The problem was that Penney’s customers loved coupons and sales! Many were used to finding bargains and thought they were getting better deals when merchandize was marked down. The abrupt, sweeping changes drove longtime customers away without attracting new ones15.
There were other issues as well. Believe it or not, J.C. Penney was a pioneer in online retailing. By 2006, its online sales had surpassed $1 billion! Unfortunately, the company failed to maintain its early advantage. In 2012, its internet sales fell 33% even as online shopping was becoming ubiquitous16. Furthermore, re-re-inventing itself after the disastrous “Fair and Square” pricing debacle led to deteriorating gross margins in 201317. The company struggled to regain its identity, debt made a sustained recovery increasingly difficult, and then COVID-19 delivered the final blow, leading Penney’s to declare bankruptcy on May 15, 202018.
Although the pandemic had already kept its doors shut for months, the J.C. Penney at Muncie Mall was among the first 154 stores slated for closure following the bankruptcy. It briefly reopened in June 2020 to liquidate its remaining merchandise19, then the store sat vacant for half a decade. Last year, its fate became clear when officials announced that the Muncie Redevelopment Commission would commit $432,000 to demolish it. Its goal was to clear the property for attractive new outlots facing McGalliard Road, where several businesses had already expressed interest in locating20.
Months later, Mall owners Hull Property Group announced that a bigger chunk -the vacant J.C. Penney, Sears, and Movies at Muncie Mall- would all be coming down21. Early this year, Hull announced the shocking news that the entire mall aside from Buyer’s Market, which is separately owned in a building once home to L.S. Ayres and Macy’s, would be demolished22. The cinema was first to go this past June, and work on Sears started last month. Now, Penney’s day has come.
Fencing surrounded J.C. Penney for just over a year, but there was little outward indication that demolition was imminent. That changed by last Tuesday, when workers pushed the barriers out farther to accommodate heavy machinery just as they’d done before tearing down Sears and the cinema. By Friday, the transformation was hard to miss: the building’s main entrance had been transformed into a gaping maw that exposed its interior to allow excavators to claw their way through.
Already, the area outside J.C. Penney has gone from a concrete lane with the occasional pothole to mountainous terrain as wreckage from inside the store is hauled out and piled high behind the construction fence. Heaps of twisted metal, broken concrete, insulation, and other debris now stand in front of the building’s entryways.
With the old movie theater already gone, Sears reduced to heaps of rubble, and J.C. Penney actively being torn apart, Muncie Mall is changing faster than it has in decades. Before long, the sprawling center that generations grew up with will be unrecognizable! There’s still a lot of work ahead, though -the mall’s nine remaining tenants will have to leave before the rest of the complex is destroyed- and I intend to document as much of it as I can.
Whatever eventually replaces Muncie Mall, it’s important to preserve a record of what stood there for so long. J.C. Penney, and even Grant’s, were fixtures of the mall, but, soon there won’t be much evidence that they ever occupied this corner of the property. I can’t stop the excavators, nor would I really want to, but I can make sure there’s a photographic record of J.C. Penney’s final days. Long after the rubble’s been cleared and something new stands in its place, I hope these pictures help tell the story of what used to be there.
Sources Cited1 Shores, L. (1967, July 9). Sears to Build New Store at Mall on McGalliard Rd. The Muncie Star. p. 1.
2 Simon Associates Obtain Building Permits for Mall (1968, November 2). The Muncie Star. p. 7.
3 De Rosa (2026, June 29). “Known for Values:” William T. Grant on His 150th Birthday. William T. Grant Foundation. Web. Retrieved October 30, 2026.
4 In-N-Out does $2 billion in annual sales. It breaks one rule other fast-food chains follow (2026, October 12). Fast Company. Web. Retrieved October 30, 2026.
5 Thursday Is the Big Day for the Big, Big New Grants (1970, September 9). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 32.
6 Failures: Grant Goes Under (1975, October 12). Time Magazine [New York]. Web. Retrieved October 30, 2026.
7 Retailing: Grants Cuts Back (1975, January 27). Time Magazine [New York]. Web. Retrieved October 30, 2026.
8 Glasberg, D.S. (1989). The Power of Collective Purse Strings: The Effects of Bank Hegemony on Corporations and the State. University of California Press [Berkeley]. Book.
9 W.T. Grant Declares Itself Bankrupt (1975, October 3). The Muncie Star. p. 21.
10 Grant’s at Mall reopens Nov. 19 to sell inventory (1975, November 14). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 20.
11 New JCPenney Store Big Addition to Muncie Mall (1977, January 18). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 17.
12 (See footnote 11).
13 7-Year-Old Mall Dons New Colors (1977, April 21). The Muncie Star. p. 36.
14 Lal, R. (2013, August 20). What went wrong at JC Penney? Harvard Business School. Harvard University [Cambridge]. Web. Retrieved October 31, 2026.
15 With Ron Johnson Out, What Should J.C. Penney Do Now? (2013, May 13). The Conference Board [New York]. Web. Retrieved October 31, 2026.
16 Weissman, C.G. (2020, May 19). How JCPenney’s e-commerce strategy ultimately faltered. ModernRetail. Web. Retrieved October 31, 2026.
17 United States Securities and Exchange Commission Form 10-Q (2013, May 4). J.C. Penney Company, Inc. United States Securities and Exchange Commission [Washington, D.C.]. Quarterly Report.
18 Exclusive: J.C. Penney explores bankruptcy as hopes for recovery fade – sources (2020, April 14). Reuters. Web. Retrieved October 31, 2026.
19 Stefanski, C. (2020, June 7). Muncie Mall JCPenney to reopen for liquidation sale. The Muncie Star Press. p. A1.
20 Wiechmann, S. (2025, June 30). Muncie commission approves money to begin demolishing part of Muncie Mall. Indiana Public Radio. Web. Retrieved October 31, 2026.
21 Kramer, R. (2025, September 21). The Muncie Mall is about to change in a big way! Hull Property Group, a Georgia developer that owns 27 [Facebook]. Video.
22 Wiechmann, S. (2026, February 26). IPR: Muncie Mall to be fully demolished. Indiana Public Radio [Muncie]. Web. Retrieved February 26, 2026.
