Apple Glen Crossing and Orchard Crossing: the Illinois Road pair

APPLE GLEN CROSSING, 2000S · ORCHARD CROSSING, BUILT 2008 · ILLINOIS ROAD AT I-69

Jefferson Pointe does not stand alone, and the record is careful about the distinction its visitors blur: across Apple Glen Boulevard stands Apple Glen Crossing, a separate power center under different owners that is nonetheless, in the retail directories' own note, "often considered to be a part of Jefferson Pointe." Apple Glen is the bigger of the two by the trade-area count — 483,000 square feet anchored by a Walmart Supercenter, a Dick's Sporting Goods, a Best Buy, a Kohl's, an Ulta, and a PetSmart — the big-box half of a two-part west-side downtown, lifestyle polish on one side of the boulevard and category killers on the other. Together the pair made the Illinois Road exit of I-69 the southwest quadrant's commercial capital within five years of Jefferson Pointe's opening.

Across Illinois Road from both, Orchard Crossing completed the triangle. Built in 2008 at Illinois and South Thomas roads and shadow-anchored by a Target, the center proper measures 130,100 square feet in the JLL sale record — 99 percent leased when it last sold — while trade-area accounting that includes the Target counts 272,000; both measures are carried as the record gives them. Its anchors are a Hobby Lobby, a Dollar Tree, and a Five Below, and since September 2021 a Barnes & Noble — the same bookseller whose 2001 Jefferson Pointe store was a Fort Wayne first, now trading in its third Fort Wayne home-counting the Glenbrook store beside it. The Illinois Road pair and their lifestyle neighbor are the power-center era's mature Fort Wayne form: not one center but a retail district, assembled parcel by parcel at an interstate exit, and legible as a single place only from the driver's seat.

Sources:

1. Mid-America Real Estate, Covington Plaza offering trade-area summary (2025) — Apple Glen Crossing at 483,000 square feet with its anchors; Orchard Crossing at 272,000 square feet including Target.
2. Wikipedia, "Jefferson Pointe" — Apple Glen Crossing's separate ownership and habitual confusion with Jefferson Pointe.
3. JLL Capital Markets, Orchard Crossing sale release — built 2008; 130,100 square feet; 99 percent leased; Target shadow anchor; the Hobby Lobby and Barnes & Noble anchors.
4. Barnes & Noble store directory — the Orchard Crossing store, 1034 South Thomas Road.