As a boy growing up in Matteson, Mike Bacon said, Lincoln Mall “was the place to be.”
He and his friends, allowances stuffed in their pockets, would walk from their neighborhood, crossing Interstate 57, to the mall, southeast of U.S. 30 and Cicero Avenue, and hang out at places such as Aladdin’s Castle, the mall’s arcade or Orange Julius.
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When he was 16, he started working part-time at Montgomery Ward as a cashier in the housewares department. His mom worked as Wards as well.
“For most of the kids, somewhere in the mall was their first job,” said Bacon, Matteson’s fire chief.
Lincoln Mall held its grand opening Aug. 9, 1973, and it was the far south suburbs’ first enclosed mall.
It predated by nearly three years the opening of Orland Square in Orland Park, and at that time River Oaks in Calumet City was still an open-air shopping center.
At more than a million square feet, Lincoln Mall had four anchor stores — Carson Pirie Scott, J.C. Penney, Montgomery Ward and Wieboldt’s — and more than 100 other stores, including no fewer than 17 shoe outlets and now bygone clothiers such as Chess King, J. Riggings and Just Pants.
Kristy Boswell, who grew up in Richton Park and now lives in Oklahoma, said her memories include walking to the mall on Saturdays with her friends from Rich South High School.
“We would hang out at the arcade all the time,” she said. “We’d go chasing boys around the mall.”
Spencer Gifts was a destination for buying posters to decorate her room, and when she was in high school she bought a water bed at the mall.
“I loved Lincoln Mall,” she said. “My mom would take us there and she took me to Kinney Shoes.”
The mall closed in January 2015, with the exception of Carson Pirie Scott, which shut its doors abruptly in March 2018. Demolition followed and now there is little evidence the mall ever existed with the exception of memories and old photos.
Boswell said she came back to the area six years ago and hardly recognized what had been the location of memories growing up.
“I was really sad when I heard they had torn it down,” she said.
Bacon said his mother worked at J.C. Penney soon after the mall opened, then took a break to raise Bacon and his brother and sister, then went back to work at Montgomery Ward.
“That mall was everything for us,” Bacon said, noting the family’s dentist had an office near Penney’s and a trip to the mall would include shopping and a dental exam.
“It was a one-stop shop,” he said. “They had everything there.”
He continued at Wards after high school even as he joined the Matteson Fire Department when he was 18. He kept that job until graduating from paramedic training when he was 21.
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Bacon said he learned as he got older what an economic engine the mall was for Matteson, providing funds for things such as public safety and street repairs. The Fire Department had a small fire vehicle in the early 1970s designed specifically to travel inside the mall to respond to a fire, he said.
“I learned later in life how much the mall provided a safety net for the village,” he said. “That mall is what made Matteson what it was and what it is.”
Wieboldt’s closed in 1987 and that anchor space remained empty until Sears opened in 1995 in the mall.
Sears, which at that point was on a massive expansion program, closed its store at the outdoor Park Forest Plaza and relocated to Lincoln Mall.
The closing of Carson’s didn’t slow plans to demolish the mall around it, with major portions cleared starting in 2017 followed by Carson’s stand-alone site in the fall of 2019. J.C. Penney moved to a free-standing store just east of the mall.
Matteson controls the 60-acre mall property and is working with a Chicago firm, The Lord Cos. LLC, to market it. The site has been divided into 14 lots to make it easier to sell parcels for redevelopment, Mayor Sheila Chalmers-Currin said.
The village offered the property as a site for the south suburban casino, which is now being built in East Hazel Crest. Previously, village officials had turned down redevelopment plans that included a hotel, indoor-outdoor water park and ice rink.
Another proposal, also rejected, included apartments and housing for senior citizens.
The mayor said she moved to Matteson in 1983, when the mall was a decade old.
“I have those fun memories of going over there and taking my kids there,” she said. “Just like everything, things have changed and it changed a lot and we are adapting to that change.”
Matteson officials hope a new development will take place, called Market Square Crossing, with a mix of high-end apartments, entertainment and open space.
Chalmers-Currin said an indoor golf facility with a hotel is also a promising avenue the village is working on, which would be an anchor to draw in other development.
“We’re determined to make new memories in what was the former mall site,” she said.