County Line Mall

County Line Mall, also known as the Greenwood Ayr-Way Mall and Target Square Mall, was an enclosed shopping mall located on County Line Road & US Highway 31 in Indianapolis, Indiana that opened on July 29th, 1976. The anchor was the Indianapolis-based Ayr-Way department store chain. The mall closed in April 2003 due to a lack of business. This mall was located directly across from the much larger Greenwood Park Mall, which had opened 12 years prior to this malls opening. This mall was also relatively small, only having one anchor, and about 20-30 smaller interior businesses. The mall also had an OfficeMax and Kroger outparcel.
== History ==
Airway Mall opened in 1976 right across from the Greenwood Park Mall. This mall featured 20-30 businesses at opening, with the anchor being the local discount department store chain Ayr-Way. The department store would be the mall's main niche until 1980, when Ayr-Way was dissolved by the parent company, L.S Ayres, which also had a Greenwood Park Mall store. As all Ayr-Way stores had done, the store in the Airway Mall was converted and renovated into Target T-130, which was one of several in Indiana at the time. The mall would subsequently be renamed to County Line Mall, and would eventually grow a niche community of loyal patrons. The Target was the largest store in the building, as it was 77,000 square feet, as opposed to the rest of the businesses, which all took up about 130,000 square feet in total. The mall would continue to be popular, until October 10th, 2001 when Target would close the store and relocate it to a larger building on N State Road 135. The mall would then collapse in popularity, with less and less customers daily.
In April of 2003, plans were made to demolish the interior of the mall and completely renovate it. The mall was subsequently gutted and remodeled, with leases of the interior businesses being terminated, so they would have to close the store, or move somewhere else. They would eventually complete this renovation process, and the mall was then reopened as The Shoppes At County Line, which was a strip mall. Target was left intact and was made into the West Virginia-based chain Old Time Pottery. The plaza notably was very heavily vacant during it's early years, with the left side of the mall becoming a drive-thru credit union, Indianapolis-based Sofa Express & More!, Planet Fitness, and IRC Music. Planet Fitness closed and relocated to the old Kroger in 2014, and Sofa Express closed all of their stores in 2008. Old Time Pottery would operate until July 2023, when they would liquidate and shutter the store. Currently, as of October 2023, the former mall is now half vacant, with Old Time Pottery, Hancock Fabrics, and Regency Beauty all being gutted for the first time in 20 years. As of right now, Academy Sports + Outdoors is slated to take over half of the building, leaving only T.J. Maxx, Maurices, and OshKosh B'Gosh as the main tenants. Even during this, the Kroger and OfficeMax stores would remain until they both closed, with Kroger closing in 2007, and OfficeMax in 2013. Kroger would become Incredible Pizza Company in 2012, and subsequently close in 2014.
== See Also ==
* Greenwood Park Mall
* Target/Locations
* Ayr-Way
== Gallery ==
File:Ayrwaygreenwood.jpeg|Newspaper clipping of the mall on grand opening day, July 29th, 1976.