Salem Mall was the first enclosed shopping center in the Dayton, Ohio area. It was located at the intersection of Shiloh Springs Road and Salem Avenue, in the northwest Dayton suburb of Trotwood. The center opened in 1966, and in its early stages had 60 retailers. The original mall was anchored by the Rike's and Sears department stores. There was also a Liberal supermarket, a smaller department store called The Metropolitan, and a multi-screen cinema.
A large-scale renovation was completed in 1981 with the construction of a two-story concourse capped by a new J.C. Penney anchor store (relocated from the nearby Forest Park Plaza). The supermarket, which was closed by 1979, had its space subdivided into inline stores. While the expansion included a food court, it was pretty much an afterthought and had limited seating. So when The Metropolitan closed in the mid-80s, its space was extensively reworked to form a much larger food court adjacent to the center court. The mall, which by that time featured over 110 retailers, was prosperous throughout the remainder of the 1980s.
By the mid 1980's poor mall management affected the Salem Mall's ability to attract new tenants, renew existing leases, and most importantly, attract serious shoppers. By the mid-late 1990s, the Salem Mall was officially considered a dead mall. In 1998, anchor store Lazarus left the mall, and later that year J.C. Penney also closed. The restaurants and the Loews Cinema also went out of business, leaving Sears and a newly-built Home Depot as the only anchors.
Demolition of The Salem Mall began on May 15, 2006. Sears is the only part of the original structure that remains. The area is being redeveloped as the Landmark Town Center, an upscale, open-air, "lifestyle" complex, intended to resemble the Easton Commons in Columbus. The new center, replacing the old Salem Mall, has suffered delays and its completion date has been extended indefinitely.
The site the former mall used to contain the farm owned by Roscoe Filburn who was a party in the famous Wickard v. Filburn case dealing with the growing of wheat and its effect on interstate commerce.
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