Westdale Mall sits on the southwest side of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, off Edgewood Road SW. It opened in 1979 as the city’s first enclosed mall, a two-level center planned around four department-store anchors and parking for 5,500 cars.
Then it came apart. Montgomery Ward closed in 2001, Von Maur in 2007, Younkers in 2018. By 2013, most of the inside was empty, and new owners decided the enclosed format was finished.
So they demolished it. In 2014, crews tore out roughly 550,000 square feet of mall structure and rebuilt the survivors, JCPenney among them, as standalone stores…