Lakehurst Mall - 1980s

1980s

A Marriott hotel was added to the area, and Pier 1 Imports and Service Merchandise were built on outparcels.

Jacobs, Visconsi, and Jacobs, of Cleveland, Ohio bought the general areas of the mall and the convenience center from Arthur Rubloff in October 1982. (The anchor properties were owned by their respective department stores.)

The JC Penney Auto Shop closed in 1983 at part of a national decision by JC Penney to leave the auto repair business. The Globe Company, a local Lake County company, founded in 1898, went bankrupt and closed in 1985.

In August 1986, the Wieboldt's anchor went out of business, prior to the eventual closure of the entire chain. Wieboldt's management blamed the closure on the extensive distance between this store and their Chicago distribution hub, which incurred substantial expenses. The company sold their location to the Jacobs Group. The location being vacant came as a blessing when 1986 brought floods to Gurnee, Illinois, severely damaging two of the city's three elementary schools. Students in kindergarten through fourth grade were housed in the sole undamaged elementary school, while more than 600 fifth through eighth grade students were housed in the old Wieboldt's space. The space was informally known as "Wieboldt U" during that time, and the former store's shelving units were used for school storage.

After the school was renovated and the "Wieboldt U" students left, Dunham's Sports became an anchor on the lower level; several months later, Montgomery Ward moved into the upper level and built a new auto service center on an outparcel. The Montgomery Ward store had previously been located in the Belvidere Mall a few miles down Route 120. With the major anchor at Belvidere Mall gone, most thought that Belvidere Mall would close soon. It turned out that Lakehurst would close before Belvidere.