Depending on which trend piece you’re reading this week, America’s shopping malls are either dying a gruesome death or experiencing a Gen Z-driven renaissance.
While it’s true that the complexities of retail don’t necessary lend themselves to simple narratives, what’s undeniable is that many shopping malls around the country are suffering from some combination of low foot traffic, high vacancy, aging infrastructure, and changes in shopping habits.
Few companies have felt these shifts more acutely than anchor department stores such as JCPenney—a retail chain once so familiar in America’s shopping malls that it would have been hard to picture a mall without one.
In more recent years, JCPenney has been closing stores and reducing its national footprint, and 2026 may be no exception.
According to a review of local media reports, online review platforms, and JCPenney’s own store locator tool, several locations have closed or are expected to close this year.
These include a few high-profile locations, such as the store located in Chicago’s Ford City Mall. As reported by the Chicago Tribune, JCPenney had fought to say open there, but the mall recently closed earlier than expected due to safety concerns. The location was JCPenney’s last store in Chicago.
Which JCPenney stores are closing in 2026?
Our review found at least six JCPenney locations that have closed or will close this year, although this may not be a complete list. The stores, some of which were operational for decades, are located in six different states.
Already closed:
- 1500 Stoneridge Mall Road, Pleasanton, CA 94588
- Seminole Towne Center, 10 Towne Center Circle, Sanford, FL 32771
- Ford City Mall, 7601 S Cicero Ave., Chicago, IL 60652
- Rivergate Mall, 1000 Rivergate Pkwy. Ste 3, Goodlettsville, TN 37072
- Springfield Town Center, 6699 Springfield Mall, Springfield, VA 22150
Expected to close:
- 1006 Ross Park Mall Drive, Pittsburgh, PA 15237 (September)
It’s unclear how many jobs have been lost as a result of these closures or if additional closures are expected. Fast Company reached out to JCPenney for more details and will update this story if we hear back.
Last year, JCPenney also closed several stores, most of which were located inside malls.
JCPenney is no ordinary store
JCPenney was founded in 1902 and hit its peak in the 1970s with more than 2,000 locations.
These days, the brand is not exactly known for growth. At the height of the COVID pandemic in 2020, the J.C. Penney Co. sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and immediately announced a plan to close hundreds of stores.
Today, the chain is part of privately held Catalyst Brands, and it has a considerably smaller footprint than it did before the pandemic.
Perhaps because the JCPenney brand has loomed so large over the American retail landscape for so long, its shuttered locations and abandoned storefronts can elicit strong emotions among consumers.
Members of local Facebook groups, for instance, will sometimes commemorate the death of their neighborhood JCPenney long after the store is gone, marking major anniversaries with heartfelt posts about what the store had meant to them.
Last month, a Reddit user posted an eerie slideshow of an empty JCPenney storefront on the site’s popular “liminal space” subreddit, a forum that has gained popularity since the recent release of A24’s box-office hit Backrooms.
As of this week, JCPenney’s store locator tool showed 641 locations in the United States. By comparison, it reported 846 stores to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) at the beginning of 2020, when the company’s stock was still publicly traded.
This story is developing and may be updated.