When Milwaukee-based Bon-Ton Stores Inc. filed for bankruptcy in 2018, it spelled doom for the company’s long-standing Boston Store locations in the Milwaukee area.
The closure of Boston Store left colossal and prime vacant spaces at five Milwaukee-area malls – Bayshore, Brookfield Square, Mayfair, Southridge and what had been the Grand Avenue Mall and later the Shops of Grand Avenue. Nearly seven years later, the former Boston Store spaces in each of these locations have either been replaced with new retail stores or are targets of redevelopments.
The latest – and last – to get a planned new life is the sprawling space at the south end of Mayfair Mall that has sat vacant since Boston Store ceased operations there in August, 2018. The building will be redeveloped as a Scheels sporting goods store, which is expected to open in spring 2027 and employ 500 people, which would make it one of Wauwatosa’s largest employers.
Fargo, North Dakota-based Scheels plans to create a 210,000-square-foot store at Mayfair. It will be the retailer’s third Wisconsin store, joining Appleton and Eau Claire.
“Scheels has been serving communities in Wisconsin for the last 30 years and we’re excited to expand our service into the Milwaukee metro,” Scheels CEO Matt Hanson said in a press release. “After the success we’ve seen in Appleton and Eau Claire, Wauwatosa is the perfect fit for our next location.”
The city’s Community Development Authority purchased the former Boston Store property at auction in 2022, after two prior auctions failed to find a buyer.
“Scheels’ choice of Mayfair underscores Wauwatosa’s role as a key economic hub in southeastern Wisconsin,” Wauwatosa mayor Dennis McBride said in a statement. “This investment secures the mall’s future, strengthens our local economy and creates new opportunities for businesses and residents across the region.”
The site is expected to undergo a full renovation and expansion.
“We know our community will look forward to this new addition. Scheels will make an already thriving mall even better,” said Jonathan Kramer, president of the retail business of global real estate firm Brookfield Properties, which owns the mall.
In addition to its extensive retail offerings, the Scheels Mayfair location will provide custom services, such as fittings for golf clubs, baseball and softball gloves, and bows. Bicycle tune-ups will also be offered and, like other Scheels locations, there will be a Fuzziwig’s Candy Shop, rollerball, interactive arcade games, and Ginna’s Café, known for homemade fudge, jerky and specialty coffees.
The redevelopment is part of a broader vision for the Mayfair site. In addition to the Scheels project, separate plans call for approximately 900 new housing units over the next decade at the south end of the property near the new store. The next steps involve Design Review Board approval and various permits and site reviews – separately for the Scheels project and the housing component.
The Scheels announcement marks a major milestone in the development of the five former Boston Store sites since the company’s 2018 bankruptcy and closure.
Piles of rubble remained this week on the space at Brookfield Square mall where Boston Store had operated for almost 60 years. The building has been demolished, and much of the remnants are being recycled, clearing the 16-acre site at the north end of the mall for redevelopment. Wauwatosa-based development firm Irgens bought the property in 2021.
A planned redevelopment of the site by Irgens revealed this week will include medical offices, restaurants and a community gathering area. Ground is expected to be broken by fall on the estimated $50 million project, although no formal plans have yet to be submitted to the city.
“They are working through the process. It’s a start, not the end,” Brookfield Community Development Director Dan Ertl said. “We need to create an experiential town center, learning from Bayshore and Drexel Town Square and others to create a point of destination to compete with Amazon and other reasons why people don’t get out of their houses anymore. We need to create a presence. People used to go to malls for recreation and to spend time away. Those days are over. There has to be a purposeful intent on what’s created there.”
The demolition of the former Boston Store property is a key step toward redevelopment of the north end of the mall, he said.
“We appreciate Irgens investment in that step,” Ertl said. “They performed that demolition with no city funds and we appreciate getting rid of that eyesore and impediment.”
Ertl noted that Brookfield Square is plagued by a high vacancy rate. The mall’s majority owner and managing partner, Chattanooga, Tennessee-based CBL Properties, which also owns the East Towne and West Towne malls in Madison, has gone through bankruptcy struggles in recent years. It exited Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in November 2021 after jettisoning about $1.7 billion in debt.
“Coming out of bankruptcy, CBL has not reinvested in Brookfield Square at all,” Ertl said.
He noted that the plans for the former Boston Store site are part of an overall redevelopment effort in and around Brookfield Square, which has also included the construction of Brookfield Conference Center at the south end of the property.
“The Conference Center has been a tremendous success,” Ertl said. “It’s critical for a community like Brookfield. We are moving past adolescence and into maturity and one of things that was missing is that we didn’t have a meeting place of any significance. We consider the conference center a gem in our community.”
The 54,000-square-foot conference center is connected to a Hilton Garden Inn, both of which opened in 2020. Redevelopment projects at the south end of the mall property in recent years have also included Wisconsin’s first Movie Tavern by Marcus and the WhirlyBall and bowling entertainment center.
The city is hopeful that the Irgens project on the former Boston Store site will serve as a catalyst for redevelopment of the mall’s north end and beyond.
“This will transform the north end of the mall but we need the whole area around there to transform,” Ertl said. “On Executive Drive, the office park located due west, there are vacant office buildings and significantly underutilized space. Even before the pandemic reduced office occupancy, there was also a vacancy problem there because many of those buildings are old and tired. The pandemic and remote work just accelerated the fact that those properties are distressed.”
As for the former Boston Store site at Southridge, Wisconsin’s largest shopping mall, the Greendale Village Board approved a plan in December 2021 to transform the site into an upscale mixed-use complex that, according to initial plans, was to include as many as 790 apartment units, underground parking, and 50,000 square feet of retail and commercial space.
In 2021, the village of Greendale designated the parcel as blighted and subsequently purchased the property for $3.3 million to facilitate its redevelopment. Revised plans for the site, which will be developed by Milwaukee-based Barrett Lo Visionary Development, were submitted in October 2024 and called for a mixed-use development with 675 market-rate apartments and more than 20,000-square-feet of retail space, as well as a village green area and plaza.
Village officials said that they anticipate that Barrett Lo Visionary Development will be submitting detailed plans and zoning applications for Village Board and Plan Commission consideration sometime this year.
Two other former Boston Store locations in the area already have been redeveloped.
The Downtown site at the corner of West Wisconsin Avenue and North Vel R. Phillips Avenue, where Boston Store had operated for 125 years, is now a Kohl’s department store. The Menomonee Falls-based retailer officially opened the store in November 2023. The 35,000-square-foot space opened as part of Kohl’s effort to create smaller format stores in various markets that feature localized product assortments. It’s also served as a cog in the ongoing redevelopment of Westown.
The building that houses the Kohl’s store, now known as HUB640, is a mixed-use facility that also includes office space and loft apartments. The 429,000-square-foot facility is now also home to the corporate headquarters of Fiserv, a global financial and payments technology provider, which relocated to the Downtown site from its longtime Brookfield home base in March 2024.
The former Boston Store site at Bayshore in Glendale was replaced by a two-story, 128,500-square-foot Target store that opened in October 2021. Initial plans had called for the demolition of the former Boston Store building so that it could be replaced with offices, stores and restaurants but the mall’s owner at the time altered its plans and announced that Target would instead take over the site.
