Lima Mall

Edward J. DeBartolo Sr. opened Lima Mall on November 18, 1965, in American Township, Ohio, with a grand-opening ceremony attended by Ohio state and federal officials and Elida High School’s band; rather than a ribbon-cutting, the developer presented a ceremonial “ribbon” made of $100 bills, donated afterward to the Allen County Children’s Home. Originally 166,000 sqft, the mall opened with Sears, JCPenney and The Leader, a local department store, as anchors.

Lazarus joined as a fourth anchor in 1971, and The Leader was acquired by Dayton-based Elder-Beerman in February 1974, reopening under that name in September 1975 after a construction expansion. At roughly 742,000 sqft, the property has since lost every anchor except JCPenney: Elder-Beerman closed January 31, 2016; Sears closed September 2, 2018; and Macy’s, which the Lazarus space had become in 2003, went dark March 21, 2021.

Kohan Retail Investment Group, together with Rocky Companies, bought the mall for $12 million in February 2024. The former Macy’s building was demolished in March 2025 to make way for a planned roughly 128,000 sqft Target store; the opening, originally targeted for summer 2026, has since slipped to fall 2026, with active hiring for the new location underway as of this writing.

That anchor-by-anchor decline followed by a planned Target-anchored rebuild on the former Macy’s footprint, JCPenney persisting throughout as the sole constant across six decades, reflects a redevelopment pattern increasingly common among mid-size Ohio malls: distressed-asset specialists acquiring anchor-depleted properties specifically to attract a single new big-box tenant to a demolished former anchor site, rather than pursuing a full-property redevelopment.