Kennedy Mall

Kennedy Mall is a shopping mall located in Dubuque, Iowa. The mall is located just north of Dodge Street (U.S. Highway 20) at the intersection of Dodge and Wacker Drive.

Kennedy Mall was the first climate controlled mall in the state of Iowa. In 1964, Montgomery Ward announced that it would move its store in Dubuque, which was located in the downtown area, out to the west end. In February 1966, rezoning of the land on which the mall was built was approved. William F. Cafaro and Associates of Youngstown, Ohio developed the site. Originally, the three main anchor stores were Younkers, Montgomery Ward, and Roshek's - which had also moved to the west end. Bishop's Buffet also opened a location at the mall which is still open today.

In the fall of 1968, Younkers was opened. This was followed by Montgomery Ward in the spring of 1969, and Roshek's followed in the fall of 1970. The mall was formally opened on April 15, 1970. At the time, it had sixty stores, which made it Iowa's largest encolsed mall. Soon afterwards, a tornado had damaged the Dubuque area, which included the mall.

Today, Younkers is the only remaining original anchor store to still operate a store at the Mall. Roshek's closed its mall store in 1982, and Montgomery Ward followed suit in 1983. J.C. Penney then moved from its downtown location into the space that had been previously occupied by Wards. Armstrong's Department Stores of Cedar Rapids, Iowa moved into the space previously occupied by Roshek's. In the late 1980s, Armstrong's ceased operations. At that point, Sears decided to move their store from the south end of Dubuque to Kennedy Mall. They took over the southern half of the store. Younker's eventually decided to expand, and moved their men's and houseware departments into the northern half of the building. Today, Sears, J.C. Penney, and Younkers make up the anchor stores to Kennedy Mall.

In the late 1980s, a number of renovations were made to the mall. This included opening up a food court at the northeast corner of the mall. It also included a number of cosmetic improvements to the mall. Originally, there was a two screen movie theater located within the mall. In the late 1980s, a new eight screen movie theater was built just west of the mall to replace the old two screen theater at the mall.

Recently, part of the northeast corner of the mall was torn down and rebuilt to accomodate a new Borders book store. This new book store took over most of what had previously been the food court area.

Best Buy obtained part of the south east parking lot, which was originally overflow parking, and built their own store at that location.