Before Belden Village Mall was built in Jackson Township, the area was just farmland. The Belden family owned the land for many years, and it was mostly quiet on the northwest side of Canton, Ohio.
Some parts were hilly, others were wet, and it was really only useful for letting animals graze.
Then, in the mid-1960s, the Richard E. Jacobs Group noticed something most people did not: a new part of Interstate 77 was being built through the area, and when a highway is built, people usually come…