Across the Line — University Park Mall

University Park Mall's own record and the Mishawaka press record, as searched November 2026

Lakeville has no mall; the mall its people use stands in Mishawaka, and the leg carries it here at boundary size — the regional fact, no larger. University Park Mall, 6501 Grape Road, Mishawaka: announced in 1976 at an estimated $35 million, developed by the Edward J. DeBartolo Corporation with George and Donald Cressy, and opened 14 March 1979 — Sears having opened ahead of it on 1 March. The original anchors were JCPenney, Sears, and L. S. Ayres (opened 6 May 1979), with Hudson's last in, on 7 February 1980. The succession since: Hudson's became Marshall Field's in 1997, closed in 2006, and was demolished in 2007 for The Village, a 110,000-square-foot outdoor concourse whose Barnes & Noble opened in 2009; L. S. Ayres became Macy's on 9 September 2006; a food court was added in the middle 1990s — the carriers divide between 1995 and 1996, and the conflict is registered in this lane's accounting rather than settled here; Simon renovated in 2013; Sears closed in 2019. The mall's present state: 137 stores, anchors Barnes & Noble, JCPenney and Macy's, one anchor space vacant, its forty-fifth anniversary marked 14 March 2024. That is the whole of the boundary entry: twelve miles of US 31 separate Lakeville from the nearest enclosed mall, and the town's own record — storefronts and one discount store — is not enlarged by its neighbour's size.