page_title: Rolling Acres Mall
section_title: 2006–2017: Closure and demolition
hierarchical_section_title: Rolling Acres Mall / History / 2006–2017: Closure and demolition
caption_attribution_description: English: Former JC's 5 Star Outlet/JCPenney Outlet at Rolling Acres Mall, Akron, OH, on January 18th, 2014
context_page_description: Rolling Acres Mall was a shopping mall located in the Rolling Acres area of Akron, Ohio, United States. Built in 1975, it originally included approximately 21 stores, with Sears as the main anchor store. Later expansions added several more stores including anchor stores J. C. Penney, Montgomery Ward, and O'Neil's, along with a movie theater and food court. Montgomery Ward was converted to Higbee's in 1986, and then to Dillard's in 1992, while O'Neil's became May Company Ohio, Kaufmann's, and then finally Macy's. The fifth anchor store was Target, added in 1995. At its peak, the mall had over 140 stores. It underwent a sharp decline in tenancy throughout the 1990s and into the first decade of the 21st century, resulting in the relocation of Target and closure of Dillard's. Both the mall itself and Macy's were shuttered in 2008, although Sears remained operational until 2011, and J. C. Penney as an outlet store until 2013. Rolling Acres Mall was publicized after its closure as an example of a dead mall, and non-retail ventures operated out of the former locations of Target, Sears, and Dillard's.
context_section_description: The first anchor to leave the mall was Target, which relocated to nearby Wadsworth in February 2006. Dillard's closed in August 2006, one month before Kaufmann's was re-branded as Macy's as the parent company of Kaufmann's was acquired. This Macy's, however, closed in March 2008 due to poor sales. Michael Mirharooni's Invest Commercial LLC, a real estate developer from California, bought the facility in July 2006 for $1.6 million. Invest Commercial bought the mall using a loan from Ezri Namvar's fraudulent Namco Capital Group. At the time of purchase, the mall had about 40 remaining tenants, including Dollar General, MasterCuts, Deb Shops, Bath & Body Works, Zales Jewelers, Subway, Hershey's Ice Cream, GNC, and FootAction USA, along with a number of local independent stores. Under Mirharooni's ownership, proposals were made to convert the mall to offices, light industrial, or call centers. As part of the sale, Invest Commercial also paid over $600,000 in property taxes that had gone unpaid by Heywood Whichard. In 2007, a homeless man was found living in an abandoned store, with over $30,000 in merchandise that he had stolen from other mall merchants.
  By October 2008, only eight tenants remained, including Diamond's Menswear and Digital Palace. At this point, all of them were informed that the mall could no longer afford its electricity bill, and it would be closing as soon as possible. On October 31, 2008, the mall closed except for Sears and the J. C. Penney outlet. On April 23, 2009, it was announced that the mall had been auctioned online, and that several people showed interest in buying it for various purposes. The mall was set to be auctioned off on May 1, 2009. No bids were placed for the mall. The building was sold to Premier Ventures LLC of California in November 2010. The company announced plans to use the existing structure. The company did not pay taxes on the property, including the back taxes owed to 2006, and as a result the city of Akron began foreclosure proceedings in September 2013.
  Shortly after the 2010 sale, Sears announced it would be closing its location at the mall, and it closed on April 3, 2011. J. C. Penney announced in January 2011 that it would eliminate all outlet stores; nine months later, SB Capital Group purchased all J. C. Penney Outlet Stores with plans to rename them and continue to operate them, including the Rolling Acres store, under the name JC's 5 Star Outlet. This venture was also unsuccessful, and all of the JC's 5 Star Outlet locations were closed in 2013. On December 31, 2013, the store was closed, which left the entire mall vacant.
  A sheriff's sale was set to be held in October 2014, but was called off because of a filed bankruptcy on the part of Premier. The city attempted another sheriff's sale in March 2015 but it was again delayed to June 16, 2015 by an incorrect dismissal of the previous bankruptcy case. On June 16, the mall was once again pulled from sheriff's sale at the last second by a second bankruptcy filing by the owner. Subsequent sheriff's sales on August 6 and October 6 also failed at the last minute by bankruptcy filings. An agreement was reached in November 2015 to force the sale of the mall while legally barring Premier from filing for bankruptcy until two months after sales proceedings ended.
  The mall was widely documented during its period of abandonment as an example of the dead mall phenomenon. From 2012–2016, Cleveland-based photographer Johnny Joo documented the continuing deterioration of the mall throughout the seasons. Other photos taken of the abandoned mall by photographer Seph Lawless, whose pictures "soon began circulating on social media and the web pages of national news outlets."
  After subsequent sheriff's sales failed in mid-2016, the mall was foreclosed by Summit County on June 26, 2016. This transferred ownership to City of Akron who, the council said they would seek to work with a developer and that the buildings would be demolished. Four former department store buildings are still owned by other companies. In September 2016, J. C. Penne
caption: Former JCPenney Outlet building, January 2014
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