The Future of Grand Traverse Mall

Can the former shopping mecca make a comeback?

By Craig Manning | Oct. 12, 2024

With a dozen of the Grand Traverse Mall’s retail spaces vacant, one anchor recently out the door, and another anchor store rumored to be on its last legs, the question bears asking: Are the last days of the Grand Traverse Mall upon us?

A mall directory from 1997 lists 96 different Grand Traverse Mall businesses, including 14 food court tenants, a Disney Store, a video game arcade, a laser tag arena, and half a dozen jewelry stores.

But the boom days are in the rearview: The shopping center’s current directory lists just 58 businesses and reflects the recent departure of TJ Maxx, one its anchor tenants, which relocated to the former Bed Bath & Beyond building at Buffalo Ridge Center earlier this year. The movie theater, last operated by Carmike Cinemas, closed in 2015. The pandemic led to a slew of closures, including H&M, Gap, CityMac, and Jonathon B. Pub. And just this year, High Tops, the night club slated to open in the Jonathon B. Pub space, changed course for Cherryland Center instead.

There are also rumors that another mall anchor, Macy’s, could soon close. The department store chain announced in February it will shutter 150 stores over the next three years, including at least 50 by the end of 2024. Thanks to the struggles of Grand Traverse Mall, some locals have speculated that the local Macy’s isn’t long for this world.

Reached for comment, a Macy’s spokesperson told Northern Express sister publication The Ticker that “final decision on specific locations [to be closed] has yet to be made.” Regarding the Traverse City location, the spokesperson said an “evaluation” was underway at the store, “comparing the potential real estate value and the future sales growth profitability.” The spokesperson added that, if at some point Macy’s does choose to close the Grand Traverse Mall location, that wouldn’t happen until at least 2025.

Regardless of what happens to Macy’s, Garfield Township Planning Director John Sych says it’s “just a matter of time before there is going to be a change” in how Grand Traverse Mall is utilized. That said, Sych admits that losing another anchor tenant could force the issue for mall owners Brookfield Properties.

“We’re dealing with [a mall transformation] right now at the Cherryland Center, because there were significant closures of three anchors at that center,” Sych says, referring to former Cherryland tenants K-mart, Younkers, and Sears. “We’ve certainly looked at the Grand Traverse Mall, too. We know that enclosed malls are challenged these days; patterns of shopping are just different than they were 10, 20, 30 years ago. So, we know that there will be some changes coming. We just don’t know when.”

Sych does see some signs of strength at the Grand Traverse Mall. That Target location, for instance, “was completely redone a few years ago, so we know they’re not going anywhere,” he says. And just a few weeks ago, Great Lakes Children’s Museum (GLCM) confirmed plans to relocate from Discovery Pier to an 8,000-square-foot space at the mall. While GLCM is still looking for a permanent space—“ideally with spacious outdoor areas,” according to a press release—the mall will be its home for now.

Speculation about the demise of shopping malls isn’t new. According to recent research from Capital One Shopping, the U.S. is home to approximately 1,150 shopping malls. There were more than 25,000 malls in the U.S. in the mid-1980s. The country’s surviving malls have higher vacancy rates than other types of retail spaces (8.6 percent at the end of last year, versus 2.6 percent vacancy for retail properties as a whole) and are rapidly being demolished (2 million square feet of mall space in 2022 alone) or shuttered (an average of 1,170 malls per year between 2017 and 2022). Within a decade, malls could be an endangered species: Capital One projects as few as 150 will remain by 2032.

If the Grand Traverse Mall makes it to 2032, it will be 40 years old. The mall opened in 1992 with dozens of stores, a full food court, and a multiplex. Target and JCPenney were initial anchor tenants, with Hudson’s joining shortly after the mall opened. The property was so vibrant and popular in the early days that it pulled key retailers out of downtown Traverse City, prompting some consternation about downtown’s longevity among shop owners who decided to remain there.

For his part, Sych thinks attracting more non-retail tenants like GLCM—or like Grand Traverse Bay Gymnastics, which moved into the former H&M space in 2021—will be key to reversing Grand Traverse Mall’s “dying shopping center” narrative. He sees significant lessons to be learned from the revitalization at Cherryland Center, which has been driven not by new retail stores but by tenants like Traverse City Curling Club, K1 Speed, Traverse City Philharmonic, and now High Tops.

“We did reach out a few years ago to Brookfield Properties, and we told them that the township sees [the Grand Traverse Mall] as mixed-used center,” Sych says. “We know that we’re not going to be able to look at it anymore as a strictly retail or even strictly commercial operation. But we also think there’s great opportunity there to look at other uses, whether those are entertainment uses, financial uses, or even housing. There’s still a lot of value there. It’s a highly visible site; it’s certainly accessible. And given our climate here in the winter months, I think there’s a need for indoor spaces. Imagine if that Macy’s was converted to all residential, and then in the middle of January, you could just walk to Target to do your shopping. Obviously, it’s all up to the owners to figure all that out. But I think the property has a lot of promise.”

Brookfield Properties did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Pictured: An empty Macy's parking lot on a Thursday morning in September.