FOREST PARK, Ohio — The wrecking crew has arrived at Forest Fair Mall, inspiring a strange mix of excitement and nostalgia for the small group of Forest Park city leaders who walked through the property for the last time Wednesday, Aug. 20.
Born in the golden age of shopping centers, the 1.5 million-square-foot “mega mall” had a roster of luxury retail anchors that Cincinnati never saw before or since, names like Bonwit Teller, B. Altman and Sakowitz Destinations.
Who could have predicted in 1989 that Forest Fair Mall would be dead and gone before the age of 40?
WATCH: We were there for the last tour of the Forest Fair Mall before its demolition
“One of my earliest memories was coming up here to Time Out,” said Forest Park Mayor Aharon Brown, referring to the indoor amusement park that included a carousel, Ferris wheel and miniature golf. Brown came to the arcade with his grandmother as a child.
“I spent a considerable amount of time (here), especially as a teenager,” Brown said. “A lot of movies that were coming out at the time, this is like 'The Transformers' era, I seen a lot of movies, 'Fast and Furious,' things like that.”
When the group encountered an indoor playground in the former Bigg’s hypermarket wing, Parks and Recreation Coordinator Jay Dennis wondered aloud if he could relocate it to a city park.
Mayor Brown endorsed the idea before City Manager Don Jones made it clear that won’t happen.
“It’s actually got some good bones, a good metal structure,” Brown said. “We want to take a piece of this (mall) structure and have it for future generations to talk about.”
Jones agreed the mall’s interior is worth preserving, but a development company that purchased the property last week has a tight timeline for clearing the site and building a 716,000-square-foot distribution center to replace it by 2027.
“Logistically, I think it’s just impossible,” Jones said. “They own it now. They’re going to determine what they want to do with it.”
Texas-based Hillwood Investment Group has unlocked the potential of the 89-acre Forest Mall site by purchasing 55 acres from New York-based World Properties, the mall’s owner since 2010.
Hillwood also paid off $10.5 million in bonds from a 2004 renovation and secured the Butler County Land Bank’s pledge to use a 2021 state grant to fund $7.9 million in demolition costs.
“It’s a tremendous opportunity for growth,” Mayor Brown said. “The structure of the mall in its entirety is coming down, but the new institution that’s taking its place is only about on 50 acres or so. That presents another almost 20 acres for potential development.”
A roughly 50-acre site will be filled by the Hillman Group, a Forest Park company that distributes hardware products to retailers throughout North America. Its consolidating operations locally and could eventually make the Forest Fair property its corporate headquarters.
World Properties continues to own about 40 acres of the Forest Fair Mall site, including roughly 22 acres in Fairfield and 17 acres in Forest Park.
“We’re considering purchasing it ourselves, and then we would sell it to a developer,” Jones said of the Forest Park land fronting I-275 and Winton Road. “We think it’s going to be a very popular spot for developers and people that want to locate here.”
Jones anticipates a mixed-use development on the 17-acre site, with “amenities that would benefit the community, that aren’t already here in Forest Park. This was where all our amenities were. This was our restaurants and our shopping and everything else. So, we don’t want all that to go away.”
He expects full-scale demolition to begin by mid-September and be completed by next summer.
That would make it the second local mall to be erased from Greater Cincinnati’s retail landscape. Swifton Center in Bond Hill, built in 1951, was demolished in 2013.
Two other empty malls are moving towards demolition.
Owners of the Tri-County Mall in Springdale have signed a demolition contract to replace the 65-year-old structure with a large mixed-use development, including apartments, retail, office and hotel.
Towne Mall in Middletown, built over three years in the 1970s, could begin a partial demolition by next spring, according to WCPO content partner, Journal-News.
“It’s our hope that this property can be transformed into a thriving mixed-use development,” Middletown Vice Mayor Steve West told the newspaper.
Those projects will undoubtedly trigger the same waves of nostalgia that Forest Park leaders felt on August 11, when they took one last mall walk at Forest Fair.
“They had a little club here and I remember coming here as a college student,” said Wade Williams, director of corporate site selection for the Montrose Group, which advised Forest Park on the mall’s redevelopment. “It was a very long drive for somebody who lives in Northern Kentucky. So, I remember that. I remember going to a movie right here, when it was such an active location.”
Williams said malls have “a unique place in history” as the preferred gathering place for people who grew up in the 1980s and ‘90s.
“It’s where you met your friends. It’s where you ran around with your parents. I think it was part of the growing-up culture,” Williams said. But “kids can do that now on social media apps. They don’t necessarily have to go to the mall to meet their friends. So that’s I think what drove some of the challenges. And there’s obviously the change in how people buy. Amazon and all the delivery (options) changed the buying habits.”
Like others on the Aug. 20 tour, Williams felt the sense of loss while walking the mall’s dusty corridors and seeing the holes in its ceiling, water stains on its floors and the forlorn fish mobile that replaced the sparkling lights that adorned the Time Out arcade back in 1989.
But he’s also encouraged by the economic potential of a mall’s demolition.
“It’s great to see a project that now can be viable, that can be revenue producing,” Williams said. “But it’s also that we’re retaining a company and it’s a headquarters and we were able to work with a great developer to make that happen. I’m very excited about it and I think it’s a great opportunity for the region and for the city.”
