Large red signs outside Joann Fabric and Crafts in Iowa City loom over its windows, advertising 20 to 40 percent sales across all items in the store — something any crafter in Iowa would typically be overjoyed to see. But the signs signal the most recent change to the Iowa City Marketplace: the closure of Joann’s location on Sycamore Street.
The shuddering of Joann’s follows the craft store’s filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy for the second time in the past year. While the company was originally set to close only 500 of its 800 locations, the liquidation firm, GA Group, who now own Joann’s, decided to close all locations.
However, Iowa City Marketplace, formerly known as the Sycamore Mall, is no stranger to store closures and has had many retail locations come and go over the years, changing the aesthetics and dynamics — and profitability — within the mall.
The Sycamore Mall seen today is bisected and boarded up so the path to the end of the mall runs outside in front of University of Iowa QuickCare, H&R Block, Ollie’s Discount Store, Marcus Theater, and Tru Blends Grooming Lounge.
The inside of the mall is empty and dimly lit, a ghostly echo filling the wide hallways. There’s no one inside except for a few customers who can be heard chatting inside stores. Signs line the windows of businesses, welcoming customers inside and hanging as though patiently waiting for more people to arrive.
The Hallmark sign still hangs over one of the entrances to the mall that hasn’t been boarded up, but this store hasn’t been in the mall for years, so it only advertises a vacancy waiting to be filled.
The decision to close Joann’s locations broke the hearts of many in the crafting community, including those in the University of Iowa Knitting Club, who gather weekly to destress from classes and find community through crafting. Members of the group often go together to Joann’s on weekends to buy inexpensive supplies like yarn, needles, and hooks.
“I heard that they were all closing, and I texted one of my friends immediately, and we both started losing our minds,” Emery Otte, a fourth-year student at the UI and a member of the knitting club, said. “I want to cry about it, but I shouldn’t cry about yarn.”
Julie Brashers-Krug, a fourth year at the UI who has lived in Iowa City since she was six and previously worked at Joann’s, said the one constant thing about the Sycamore Mall is it was always changing, describing the mini golf that was replaced by the workout equipment at Planet Fitness.
“I remember a lot of things changing, especially a lot of things shutting down,” Brashers-Krug said. “There was a sign up in the window after that place closed down that said ‘New yogurt shop, coming soon.’ It did not come soon. It never arrived.”
Part of this change comes from the mall constantly rotating through anchor stores — large, well-known retail stores that draw in consumers, often to the benefit of smaller stores within the mall.
In 2013, Von Maur, which had been housed in the Sycamore Mall and an anchor store for the location, moved to the Iowa River Landing in Coralville. With this relocation of Von Maur also came the rebranding of Sycamore Mall to Iowa City Marketplace.
The space left open by Von Maur was eventually filled by Lucky’s Market in 2015, which ultimately closed in 2019, leaving the mall, once again, without an anchor store.
The state of the mall remained uncertain until, in 2022, Iowa City Marketplace was sold to Brookwood Capital Advisors, a Tennessee-based retail and development company, for more than $14 million. One of the spaces the company leased out was the space left open by Lucky’s Market, which, in 2023, was filled by Ollie’s Bargain Outlet store, marking Ollie’s first location in Iowa.
While the spot left open by Von Maur and Lucky’s Market has finally been filled, the new space left open by Joann’s closing has also left Anika Jain, the president of the UI Knitting Club, wondering how this will further impact the Iowa City Marketplace. She said she wonders how it will specifically impact those in the crafting community who relied on Joann’s as a source for not only supplies but community and classes, too.
“There’s nothing quite the same as going in person and picking out colors or picking out fabrics, or my friends and I would just go and look around,” Jain said. “Joann has classes that just can’t happen as well online, so it really helps create a generation of crafters, and it’s really sad to see those opportunities going away.”
Chloe Ladines, a third-year student at the UI and the treasurer of UI’s Knitting Club, also mourned not only the loss of Joann’s but the loss of mall culture overall — especially for children who no longer have the spaces provided by malls to play indoors or safely gather.
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“Where are we supposed to congregate now?” Ladines said. “I don’t know. But [the mall] brings the family together and brings friends together.”
For Brasher-Krug, however, the decaying state of the mall isn’t a significant loss to the Iowa City community because Iowa City still has its bustling downtown scene.
“I much prefer downtown culture in general [because] mall culture, to me, is someplace you have to drive to, it’s someplace isolated,” Brasher-Krug said. “It’s nice to have a place to shop as people in a smaller city, and this is our only in-town mall. So, it’s a shame it’s in such bad shape. But, in general, I don’t think Iowa City has really felt its loss very hard.”
And maybe Brasher-Krug is right, considering when asked how they felt about the state of the Sycamore Mall, neither Otte nor Ladines knew where the mall was located.
But despite the death of mall culture in the U.S., shops in the Iowa City Marketplace like Tru Blends are still finding ways to draw in business and sustain themselves.
As a barber shop, Tru Blends does not rely solely on the foot traffic drawn in by the mall and instead builds its own network outside of the mall through its website, social media, and word-of-mouth.
Even with its continued success, Jakari Smith, a barber apprentice at Tru Blends, still believes physical spaces like malls and barber shops are important.
“People need that physical space,” Smith said. “You come in here, you see a physical space where you have barbers at, and you see the atmosphere. [People] are hanging out, there’s music going, might be sports on TV or music on TV, so it’s important for that aspect.”
As for the future of the Sycamore Mall itself, Peggy Stover, associate professor and director of the Marketing Institute at the UI, said she believes mall culture will not see a resurgence in the U.S. and that empty spaces within the mall should be repurposed.
Stover explained how these spaces could be converted into services a community may need, such as health clinics, public libraries, or office spaces, and some malls have already begun such conversions. This can be seen in the QuickCare Clinic that opened in the Iowa City Marketplace.
“The footprints of the building itself, it needs to find a new purpose because if it sits there vacant, what ends up happening is it starts looking like an eyesore to the community,” Stover said. “Finding a new use for the real estate itself is going to be a critical component that these communities need to face, and the owner of the building itself.”