In mall-morium: Former, current employees gather to say goodbye to Spring Hill Mall

For more than 43 years, Doug Winger parked in the same spot whenever he reported to work at Spring Hill Mall.

He parked in that spot again on Friday. This time, it was to see old friends and say goodbye during a going away party on the mall’s last official day of business.

“I was the first one here, and I’ll be the last one locking the door,” he said.

Winger started a month before the mall opened in 1980, working with the cleaning crew that got the mall ready for business. He’s been there ever since.

“I look back on everything with one hundred percent gratitude,” Winger said. “I have nothing but good memories. Everything was always community and family-oriented, and I loved that.”

The village of West Dundee, which already owns the former Sears and Macy’s buildings, plans to purchase the mall, which straddles West Dundee and Carpentersville.

One of the conditions of the village’s deal with mall owner Kohan Retail Investment Group was that tenants, except for a movie theater and Kohl’s, vacate the mall.

“It’s certainly sad to see,” West Dundee Village President Chris Nelson said earlier of the mall’s closing. “But I think that probably around 2020 it was clear that the improvements made in 2016 were not going to sustain the mall.”

In 2016, the village created a tax increment finance district to inject new life into the mall. Though the mall saw some improvement, including the addition of a movie theater, the TIF district never generated any revenue because property values did not increase. Instead, the village saw the value of the mall property drop from $7.6 million in 2016 to $2.5 million in 2021.

The mall struggled as major retailers, including Sears, Macy’s and Carson Pirie Scott, left. Empty storefronts inside the mall put the occupancy rate around 20 to 25%, village officials said.

Last year, the village closed on deals to buy the former Sears property for $2 million and the shuttered Macy’s store for $1.25 million.

In October, village trustees agreed to spend $7 million to buy the rest of the mall.

Retail tenants learned in February that all month-to-month leases would end on Friday and the mall would close.

On Friday, more than 50 former employees met in the mall’s center court to reminisce about old times and catch up.

Teresa Strach of Carpentersville, who worked in the management office for eight years until 1999, walked around hugging just about everyone she saw.

“We were like a family. We ate together like a family. We argued like a family. We played games together like a family,” she said. “And we loved each other like a family.”

Marilyn Tynor started working as a secretary in the marketing office of the mall a month before it opened in 1980. She worked there in various capacities for 18 years before retiring

“To look at it empty after remembering all the hubbub when it opened, it’s very sad,” she said. “We did a lot of good things for the community.”

Stacey Insisiengmay and her husband Siy, who both worked at the mall, drove up from Iowa for the informal goodbye. She has even more fond memories of the mall than most because not only did they meet while working there, they got engaged in the mall.

“I’m a little sad, but I knew it was coming,” she said. “We know the malls are dying, but you hate to see it in this condition. I’m glad we could get together for one last hurrah and say goodbye.”

West Dundee officials said they expect the deal to buy the mall will be official later this spring. Demolition of the mall, except for the Kohl’s store and the Cinemark theater, would occur within the next 12 to 18 months, they said.

Nelson said the acquisition of the mall was critical for redevelopment. He noted developers had indicated that the complexities of the mall — such as multiple property owners and land restrictions — would make it difficult to redevelop the property.