The mall is part of the much larger 1,200 acre POLARIS Centers of Commerce real estate development in northern Columbus. This development includes the McCoy Center, the Polaris Founder's Park along with over a hundred other commercial and residential developments.[2]
Glimcher Realty Trust began construction on Polaris Fashion Place in June 2000.[3] The mall opened in November 2001 with 146 inline tenants.[4] The developers chose to include several tenants which were lacking in the market,[3] including four of the seven anchor stores: Kaufmann's, The Great Indoors, Lord & Taylor, and Saks Fifth Avenue.[5][6] The other three anchors were JCPenney, Sears and Lazarus; all three relocated from Northland Mall, which closed on October 31, 2002 following the loss of its remaining inline tenants and the Northland Mall was demolished in February 2004.[7][8]
In 2003, the Lazarus store was dual-branded as Lazarus-Macy's, and then to just Macy's in 2005. After the 2006 acquisition by Federated Stores (now Macy's, Inc.) of Kaufmann's parent company, May Department Stores Company, the Kaufmann's store was shuttered and sold to Glimcher for redevelopment.[9] In 2007, the store was demolished for an outdoor expansion comprising Barnes & Noble, Forever 21 and several restaurants, including Benihana, The Cheesecake Factory and Dave & Buster's.[10] This concourse opened in 2008.[11] Lord & Taylor was repositioned and shuttered entirely in 2004. It was replaced with Von Maur, whose location at the mall is also the first in the state.[12]
In 2019, Sears closed.[15] In 2020, it was announced that the space will be razed for a mixed-use development.[16]
In March 2021, the mall saw two separate shooting incidents within the interior corridors, on March 3[17] and 15.[18] These were the first such incidents in the mall's history.
41, 102 PARTA 200
City of Columbus, Ohio
