Circle Centre

Anchor stores

In the original concept, the mall would have connected the existing downtown locations of the L. S. Ayres and the William H. Block department stores and added one or more department stores that did not then have locations in Indianapolis. In January 1988, Saks Fifth Avenue announced that it would build a new 90,000-square-foot (8,400 m2) store on the northeast corner of Washington and Illinois streets. However, in July 1990, amid a financial downturn, the new owners of Saks stated that no new stores, including the proposed Indianapolis one, would be built during the new three years.

In April 1989, Nordstrom announced that it would become Circle Centre's fourth anchor store. Initial plans had been to locate the fourth anchor in the Occidental Building at the southeast corner of Washington and Illinois streets. Nordstrom proposed a 200,000-square-foot (19,000 m2) three-story structure, which was larger than the planned site could accommodate, so Nordstrom was located in a new building on Meridian Street between Georgia and Maryland streets.

Block's department store changed its name to Lazarus in 1988, having been purchased by the latter the previous year. At the end of January 1993, Lazarus closed the downtown store, having announced their intent the previous June. Updated plans for the mall had shown Lazarus occupying a new building on the southwest quadrant of Monument Circle. Although Lazarus stated it was still open to being part of the mall, ultimately it did not.

On April 4, 1991, the May Department Stores announced that its L. S. Ayres subsidiary would not be part of Circle Centre, with the downtown location closing in the spring of 1992. In June of that year, Parisian announced that it would open a store in Circle Centre, using the first three levels of the Ayres building. As a result, Circle Centre had two anchor stores when it opened in 1995: Nordstrom and Parisian.

In July 2011, Nordstrom closed its Circle Centre store due to decreased sales as many of its customers began shopping at its newer store in The Fashion Mall at Keystone, which had opened in 2008. The mall was unable to attract another anchor store for the location after three years of effort, so an agreement was reached with The Indianapolis Star to move its newspaper offices into 100,000 square feet (9,300 m2) of the upper levels of the former Nordstrom space. The move was completed on September 29, 2014.

In 2007, the name of the Parisian store was changed to Carson Pirie Scott after having been sold to The Bon-Ton Stores in 2006; the name was later shortened to just Carson's. In December 2014, the city agreed to reduce the rent on the location by $300,000 annually through January 2018. On January 31, 2018, Bon-Ton announced that it would be closing the store (along with 46 of its other locations) in ten to twelve weeks, leaving the mall with no anchors. Carson's closed permanently at the end of the normal business hours on Sunday, April 29, 2018.

The Regal Cinemas held its final showtimes at the mall and closed on October 31, 2024, and Tilt Studio closed on November 20, 2024, leaving the mall without traditional anchors.