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In 2019, Washington Square Mall’s social media presence struck a hopeful note: “A new mall is coming soon… #ToBeContinued,” a Facebook post read. Just a few months later, that same page would announce the mall’s COVID-19 closure. In mid-2020, the page went silent.
The mall itself has followed a similar path.
A sunken play place sits closed. More than 40 retail spaces appear to be vacant. A sign points to anchor stores that no longer exist. And current tenants include businesses that are atypical for a mall, including several jewelry resale or repair stores, a dance studio and a day care.
Late on a recent Friday afternoon, many of those businesses were closed.
Michelle Fall, a business owner on the east side, remembers visiting the mall in its heyday during the 1980s. Fall was in her early 20s and had just moved to the east side from Marion. She hadn’t seen anything like Washington Square. Although she had little to spend, the mall gave her a place to daydream.
“Back in the day, it was wonderful. Everybody raved about Washington Square,” Fall told IBJ. “It was a place to go.”
Now, she and others avoid it. There are far more employees at the mall than customers, and signs warn visitors that security personnel might ask entrants to present an ID and that firearms are prohibited.
Competing visions—from the mall’s current majority owner and a local politician—aim to revamp the entire 1.1-million-square-foot shopping center, which is home to a Target.
Some stakeholders in the east-side community are hopeful about the mall’s future and have ideas for transforming the space. But others are resigned. The state of the mall is an example of the ways they say the city has disinvested in the area.
“I understand that the property is privately owned, and there’s nothing that the city can do about it. But I can almost guarantee that if it were in a more affluent area of Indianapolis … I’m sure the city would spend money, would negotiate with owners to make it better, to make it nicer, to make it where people would want to come,” Fall said.
The district’s city councilor, Republican Minority Leader Michael-Paul Hart, is trying to figure out a way to do that. He aims to secure city funding for redevelopment through a mechanism like tax-increment financing or a loan.
He’s enlisted Dorna Eshrati, a Ball State University professor in landscape architecture and planning, to help him reenvision the best use for the mall’s space.
Eshrati has been working with Hart for free. She said the space is best suited for a mixed-use town center with a combination of retail, residential, office and public spaces.
But before any progress can be made, Hart and Eshrati have to get key stakeholders—city officials and the current owner, an Ohio-based holding company and a local manager with his own vision for the space—on board.
An ambitious plan
The man behind that pre-pandemic social media post said he still believes a new mall could be “coming soon.”
“My plan is to rebrand the mall and revitalize it,” said Keith Lee, a property manager for the mall who works for owner Durga Property Holdings LLC.
The work, he said, would start with a new name—one the community would weigh in on—then bringing in structural engineers and architects to revamp the space.
His vision is to make Washington Square more like Hamilton Town Center in Noblesville. That shopping center combines national retailers, local shops and atypical tenants, like a COhatch coworking space.
Indianapolis-based Simon Property Group, the largest owner of shopping malls in the United States, owns Hamilton Town Center. Simon also once owned Washington Square but gave up on it in 2014. That’s been the pattern of steep decline for other Indianapolis malls Simon has sold, like Lafayette Square Mall and Eastgate Consumer Mall.
Lee declined to provide details on Washington Square’s finances but said it’s “staying afloat.” Just last year, he said, Lee and his business partners fielded a purchase offer for the mall. Durga’s asking price was ultimately too high for the prospective buyer, he said. Lee declined to name an asking price that would lead the company to sell the space.
Currently, Lee is leasing space for as little as $1 per square foot per year—more comparable to warehouse rents. According to the Indianapolis office of Chicago-based real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield, Indianapolis retail space rents run from $15 to $40 per square foot per year.
Multiple individuals associated with Durga and partner company Bedi & Associates did not respond to calls and emails from IBJ seeking comment on whether the company would invest in the mall further.
The city also hasn’t caught wind of any potential redevelopment.
“If the property owner is interested in redevelopment or reinvesting into that property, we’re always willing to have that conversation and support those efforts. But right now, there haven’t been any conversations related to Washington Square Mall,” Megan Vukusich, director of metropolitan development, told IBJ.
Lee, the mall’s property manager, sees some hope on the horizon in a new anchor tenant: Saraga International Grocery.
Lee said Saraga plans to open a store in the former Sears space—plans that Brad Nam, a spokesperson for the Indianapolis-based chain, denied. (Nam acknowledged that Saraga has considered an east-side property.)
However, Indianapolis property records list BNE Holdings as the owner of the former Sears space. BNE Holdings’ registered agent is Bong J Sung, who is a co-owner of Saraga.
The family-owned grocery chain that sells food from around the world began in Bloomington in 1994 and currently has three Indianapolis locations.
If Saraga does open at the shopping center, it won’t be the only recent investment in the area. Utah-based “dirty soda” company Swig opened a location just south of the mall at 10121 E. Washington St. in March.
Daron LeBlanc, a franchisee for Swig, said his first impression of the mall was, “Is this thing open? Are zombies going to run out of there?”
He called the decision to open the east-side store a gamble. However, he also noted that big names like Popeye’s Chicken, Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks and Chick-fil-A have chosen to locate along East Washington Street.
Cherry Tree Plaza, at the southwest corner of Washington Street and Mitthoefer Road, includes retailers like Marshalls, Ross Dress for Less, Aldi and Best Buy.
“It’s definitely heading in the right direction to where it can be what we call a commercial node for the community,” LeBlanc said.
Problem properties
Lisa Schwier, owner of Post Road English Garden at 1105 N. Post Road, about a mile and a half west of Washington Square, organized a neighborhood meeting last fall for area business owners. Hart and fellow east-side Councilor Andy Nielsen attended, along with police and school officials.
Schwier said nothing major has changed since that meeting, where she and other business owners voiced concerns about the shell of the former Golden Corral restaurant in front of the mall that went up in flames last November and the potholed asphalt that surrounds the mall.
“We are all frustrated on the east side because we don’t feel like any of our tax dollars are coming to our community,” Schwier said.
But city records show the city has intervened in problems with the Washington Square property. Since September, the city’s Department of Business and Neighborhood Services has cited owners and tenants at the mall numerous times for city ordinance violations like trash, high weeds and poor maintenance of private parking areas, sidewalks and streets.
The Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County has two pending cases against Durga Property Holdings LLC for code violations.
In the first, filed in January, a judge decided the company is responsible for the building’s decay, which includes pests; an unsafe foundation, roof, floor, exterior or interior wall or ceiling; and improperly installed plumbing.
Lee has attended the near-monthly court hearings in that case. As of May 15, Durga had not fully resolved the problems.
The other violation is for insufficient heating, ventilation and air-conditioning.
And the city has determined the former Golden Corral building, owned by Indy WS40 LLC, needs to be demolished and is working with the owner to do so.
Not long after winning reelection to his council seat in 2023, Hart took some city officials on a walk-through of the site. The group included Vukusich, the DMD director, and Emily Scott, the city’s administrator of community and economic development. At that time, Lee told the group Durga Property Holdings would be willing to sell the mall, Hart told IBJ.
“Something could happen if the right people are in the conversation,” Hart said.
His idea is to use the city’s bond bank to borrow money for the project once an interested developer is identified. A similar method was used to finance $66 million to redevelop downtown’s Old City Hall into an art museum-hotel and tower. That project is scheduled to break ground by October.
Eshrati, the Ball State professor doing volunteer research on the mall, said the mall’s decline is due to “a confluence of national retail contraction, local economic decline and a lack of reinvention.”
The antidote to its current state, she wrote in an email to IBJ, is a vision for a mixed-use transformation that creates walkable streets and integrates public spaces. Additionally, she said, the site should include housing to increase foot traffic, leverage the upcoming IndyGo Blue Line and reflect the wants of east-side residents.•
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No. Turn that into a park or something that would benefit the community. That mall is a cement dump.
And who would maintain that Park? The city can’t afford to take care of the ones that currently has.
Sadly, the place is hopeless. As many dead malls across the US, a resurrection is highly unlikely given online shopping and the fact that Indianapolis resident do not have sufficient disposable income to support multiple malls.
In reality, there have not been nor are there now truly first rate malls in Indy as one finds in ‘major’ cities such as Seattle, Denver, Minneapolis, etc. Indy, an agglomeration of 2 million+ residents and a massive metro area physical dimensions, still functions and feels like a minor metro, balkanized and stymied by Statehouse micro-management.
I believe the map shows the mall in the wrong location. It should be on the NW side not the SE side of Indianapolis.
Washington Square Mall is on the east side of town, not the NW side.
The mall is right on East Washington st, hence the name Washington sq. It sits on the east side of the city as stated by Kenny N.There isn’t a mall on the NW side of Indy that im aware of.
The map is correct.
When Kohl’s and others vacated across the street, that was the ‘canary in the mine’. It would be nice to see the property redeveloped, but if the much smaller, closer to town Irvington Plaza 6 miles west can’t get off the ground…..in spite of positive local intentions, no one is holding their breath. Get Irvington ‘right’ then it might spark expanded re investments.
Kohl’s has been on the decline for nearly a decade. Walmart, Meijer, Kroger, Best Buy, CFA, Starbucks are all within a few minute drive of the mall. The area has some challenges but it isn’t a retail wasteland. The problem is specifically the mall.
Exhibit #56389583 of smell being the sense most closely tied to memory:
Whenever I think of past visits to Washington Square, I can immediately smell the carmel-corn place. Good times.
Turn it into a jail for the East side.
The massive indoor shopping mall is not coming back. Yes, it evokes nostalgia for those of us of a certain age. But nostalgia is not a business model. If they can find a profitable mixed use to save most of the physical infrastructure, I’m all for it. If not, we should let nature take its course. And speaking of nature, we do seem to lack for green spaces in this city. I’d be okay with the space being turned into a public park.
Sell or Donate to Community Hospital or to Hancock County Hospital to Serve Far East side Indianapolis, Cumberland and Western Greenfield area. Health needs for that area/ Each section of mall could be refurbished for various health care needs and services. Mall Layout could be divided into separate types of Health Care Needs and services. Call us; Charter Commercial Realty Group.
For some reason, the east side just can’t get its feet off the ground no matter what they try.
Good question. Most of the first – tier business have already closed or moved. GNC, finish line, foot locker, and Bath & body Works have all moved to adjacent shopping plazas, and so did Payless shoe source before they all closed. I think target is the last business left in that mall I go to.
The manager Lee is full of crap. He’s been saying the same thing for years. I think he even lives at the mall. I was present when he talked to a friend of mine who was taking care of the Golden Corral property before he unexpectedly passed away last December. Lee bragged about this and that. Dates like he was a big shot all while driving a 20 year old BMW. I wouldn’t trust anything that comes out of his mouth and doubt the property owners in Ohio actually care about the mall.
Unfortunately for my Councilman Michael-Hart, and my professional landscape architect colleague Eshrati, new money and reuse of existing structures will be a fruitless and wasteful effort. The demographics of the area would not support those ideas or proposals.
Total demolition and total redevelopment are the only solutions. This area could not support a Hamilton Town Center type development, nor another pie in the sky ‘Lafayette Square’ redevelopment pipedream.
The days of this large of a mall are over and we need to accept that.
The managers of both Kohl’s and Sam’s Club told me they were the most shoplifted stores in the Indiana markets, and both without room for any serious expansion, part of the cause for shutting down and leaving.
Look around the mall site, north and northeast are derelict land with minimal maintenance.
The only responsible landowner, excepting some of the outlots along Washington Street is the Washington Park Cemetery, one of the city’s first and oldest, and very well maintained.
It may sound weird, but a massive expansion of the Flanner & Buchanan cemetery might be the better of any default land uses.
Just like the unsightly and unkept old Eastgate mall site should have been, total demolition and redevelopment are the only viable solutions for this outdated Washington Square mall site.
We’ve seen and experienced the lifestyles, behaviors, and lack of respect for the adjacent commercial developments, and unfortunately it has more or less destined the mall site.