Kirkwood Mall

The Bismarck-based Wachter family developed Kirkwood Plaza on a 48-acre site, breaking ground in November 1968 and dedicating the mall on May 14, 1971, named for Robert C. Kirkwood, then-chairman of the F.W. Woolworth Company, one of the original anchors alongside Montgomery Ward and Herberger’s. The Wachters sold the property in 1984 for a reported $40 million; MetLife bought it in 1987, and Chattanooga-based CBL & Associates acquired a stake starting in 2012, eventually taking over management.

The anchor lineup has turned over repeatedly: Woolworth’s space became Dayton’s in 1985, then Marshall Field’s in 2001 following Target Corporation’s department-store consolidation, closing in 2005 and getting demolished to make way for a two-level Target that opened in 2006. Montgomery Ward’s space became I. Keating Furniture World in 2003, and Herberger’s, which closed nationwide in 2018 following parent company Bon Ton’s bankruptcy, sat vacant until Tilt Studio opened there in October 2023, bringing the mall’s anchor tier to 100 percent occupancy.

At roughly 850,000 sqft, Kirkwood Mall is North Dakota’s second-largest mall and Bismarck’s largest shopping center, currently anchored by Target, Scheels, JCPenney, I. Keating Furniture and Tilt Studio. H&M opened its Southeast Wing store in September 2016, and Barnes & Noble opened a temporary location in March 2022 after a nearby Southridge Center store closed, a temporary arrangement that proved successful enough to become permanent.

That pattern, one department-store space cycling through four different national retailers over five decades while the mall itself stayed close to fully leased, reflects the advantage of Bismarck’s position as North Dakota’s capital and a genuinely growing regional hub: the Bismarck-Mandan metro area has grown from roughly 95,000 residents in 2000 to over 136,000 by 2025, among the fifty fastest-growing metro areas in the country.