Drive McKnight Road past Ross Park Mall this month and you will see plastic sheeting where the JCPenney entrance used to be, a Wayfair sign rising over what was Burlington's parking-lot facade at North Hills Village, and a marquee that keeps announcing stores nobody driving this stretch for the last twenty years would have expected. It reads like a coincidence of timing. It is not. Two shopping centers that Ross Township deliberately split into different tiers back in the 1980s are converging on the same shopper at the same moment, and the paperwork behind that convergence closed within days of each other this August.
The Split That Built the Corridor
Before 1986, there was one retail anchor on this stretch of McKnight Road: Gimbels, sitting inside what is now North Hills Village. Gimbels had been there since the plaza opened in 1957, and when its lease came up in the mid-1980s, the store didn't renew. It moved instead into a brand-new mall being built a few hundred yards away. That mall opened on August 15, 1986, as Ross Park Mall, anchored by JCPenney, Sears, and Kaufmann's.
North Hills Village had to reinvent itself with its anchor gone. By July 1987 it had a new identity: a "value-oriented center" built around Burlington Coat Factory, Hills Department Stores, T.J. Maxx, and Marshalls. For nearly four decades, that split held. Ross Park Mall carried the department stores and, eventually, the luxury names. North Hills Village carried the off-price boxes and the weekly grocery run. Two shopping centers a few hundred yards apart, built to serve two different budgets.
What's Leaving, What's Arriving
This fall breaks that arrangement on both sides at once.
| Location | Leaving | Arriving |
|---|---|---|
| Ross Park Mall (former JCPenney and adjacent spaces) | JCPenney, closing September 20, 2026 | Zara, its first Pittsburgh-area store |
| Ross Park Mall (former Levi's, Vera Bradley, Banana Republic) | Those three retailers | Additional Zara footprint |
| North Hills Village (former Burlington) | Burlington Coat Factory | Wayfair's first Pennsylvania brick-and-mortar store |
JCPenney confirmed the closure to local reporters in late May, and the statement the company gave was short on sentiment and long on lease math. A company spokesperson told Channel 11 the retailer was unable to continue its current lease terms at that location and had not found another suitable spot in the market. Two other JCPenney stores remain in the region, at the Mall at Robinson and Monroeville Mall. This one didn't survive the renewal.
Zara's arrival was announced less than two weeks ago. According to Axios Pittsburgh, the Spanish fast-fashion retailer is taking over not just the vacated JCPenney footprint but the former Levi's, Vera Bradley, and Banana Republic spaces as well, plus part of JCPenney's upper level. Mall ownership framed the move as one piece of a larger plan, describing it as set to anchor a broader redevelopment initiative focused on reimagining the mall's east end.
A few hundred yards away, Wayfair is doing something similar to the plaza that used to be the discount side of this equation. The online furniture retailer is opening its first Pennsylvania physical location inside the 95,000-square-foot box Burlington used to occupy at North Hills Village. The store will include an on-site design studio where shoppers can work with Wayfair consultants on projects ranging from small updates to full renovations, with many items available to take home same day and larger deliveries arriving within two days through the company's own logistics network.
Forty Years of Original Anchors, Gone
Here is the detail that makes this more than a tenant swap. Ross Park Mall opened in 1986 with three anchor department stores. Sears closed in 2018. Kaufmann's became Lazarus, then rebranded to Macy's in March 2005, so it survives in name only through a chain of corporate acquisitions rather than as the original tenant. JCPenney was the last of the three still operating under its 1986 name. When it closes on September 20, none of the mall's opening-day department store anchors will remain as they were.
North Hills Village is closing out its own founding era at almost the same time. Burlington was one of the four names that defined the plaza's 1987 relaunch as a value center. It's gone now too, replaced by a retailer that sells design consultations rather than discount racks.
Both corridors lost their oldest anchor within months of each other, and both replaced it with something aimed at a different customer than the one the original anchor served.
The Luxury Corridor Was Already Building Underneath It
This didn't start in 2026. Ross Park Mall has been climbing upmarket in visible stages for years. Gucci opened its first Western Pennsylvania location there in January 2023. Hugo Boss followed in 2024. In the twelve months before a September 2025 report on the mall's ongoing refresh, the property added more than twenty new retail and dining tenants, among them Allen Edmonds, Tecovas, Kendra Scott, Alo Yoga, and Carhartt, with Aritzia named as coming soon. The mall also installed new entrance signage and digital marquee signs along McKnight Road specifically to keep advertising who's new, which is part of why the corridor feels like it's in constant motion even in months without a headline closure.
That construction has occasionally caused its own small disruptions. Back in February, an early-morning fire broke out near the mall's lower level after sparks from rebar cutting caught an old cardboard subfloor, damaging a Warby Parker storefront before it was put out. It was a footnote at the time, but it's a reminder that the work behind this fall's storefront changes had been underway for months already.
What's Still There
None of this touches the corridor's dining anchors, which is worth saying plainly if you're wondering whether your regular spots are affected. Still open and unchanged:
- Sieb's Pub & Restaurant on Babcock Boulevard
- Mad Mex on McKnight Road
- Red Orchid Thai on Babcock Boulevard
- Bravo Italian Kitchen near the mall
- Ruscello, inside Nordstrom
- The Cheesecake Factory, Shake Shack, and Charleys Philly Steaks, all part of the mall's dining lineup
Whatever happens with the storefronts, the corridor's actual eating habits aren't the part that's shifting.
Reading the Marquee This Fall
If you want to track this without checking the news every week, here's the order things are likely to happen:
- JCPenney closes September 20, 2026, ending its run as the mall's last original 1986 anchor.
- Zara begins buildout across the former JCPenney, Levi's, Vera Bradley, and Banana Republic spaces, with no opening date confirmed yet.
- Wayfair's design studio and showroom take shape inside the former Burlington box at North Hills Village, with the company targeting an opening sometime next year.
None of these dates are locked beyond JCPenney's, so the marquee signs along McKnight Road are probably still your best real-time source once the plastic sheeting comes down.
What's actually happening on this stretch of road is a forty-year-old division quietly closing. The mall and the plaza stopped being two different shopping trips and started becoming one continuous, upward-moving corridor, and it happened in the space of a single season.
If you're curious how a changing corridor like this shows up in property conversations nearby, or you just want to talk through what you're seeing on your own drive down McKnight Road, Robin Taylor Homes is always glad to compare notes.
