The Stores Didn't Leave Roseville. They Moved Down the Road.

"We get a lot of mall walkers, but they aren't buying anything."

That's how one longtime HarMar Mall retailer put it to the Roseville Reader late last year. She's paying the highest rent of her tenancy while watching foot traffic that never turns into a sale, and she's not alone. As of early May 2026, 35 of HarMar's 58 storefronts sat empty, according to reporting from Axios Twin Cities. If you've looped through the Snelling Avenue entrance lately for a quick errand, you already know the feeling: half the concourse asks you to enter from the parking lot because the interior doors are locked.

Here's the part that doesn't show up if you only read the "HarMar is dying" headline. The stores that left didn't vanish from Roseville. Most of them walked five minutes down the road and reopened at Rosedale.

A Mall Running Out of Tenants, on Purpose or Not

HarMar opened in 1963 as a $12 million, 50-acre development built for 3,000 cars, complete with a hot air balloon at the ribbon cutting. Texas-based Fidelis Realty Partners bought it for $50 million in 2022 and has been talking about updates ever since without filing a single formal plan with the city. Roseville's community development director, Janice Gundlach, has said the same thing to multiple outlets over the past year: conversations with the owner remain conceptual, and nothing has been submitted for review. FOX 9 reported the same holding pattern in June.

In that vacuum, a marketing brochure did the talking. Axios obtained materials from JLL, the mall's leasing manager, describing "a full scrape and rebuild of the existing shopping center" with tenants able to move in by 2028. A separate site plan shows a strip of retail along the east side of the property, a 65,000-square-foot Cub Foods as the only named holdover from the current lineup, and 30 row houses on the south side facing Snelling Avenue and County Road B. None of it is confirmed. No permits have been filed. But it's the most specific picture anyone in Roseville has had of what might replace the mall, and it explains why the remaining tenants, Barnes & Noble, K&G Fashion Superstore, Michaels, are all operating without a lease renewal in sight.

Burlington closed in February 2026 without relocating anywhere in town. H&R Block left in 2024, also without resurfacing. Not every departure has a second act.

Follow the Marshalls Truck

But two of HarMar's biggest recent losses did land somewhere close, and if you've wondered where your regular Marshalls run went, here's the answer.

Marshalls made the move as part of the wave of closures Fidelis has seen since buying HarMar in 2022. HomeGoods followed the same script into the old Bed Bath & Beyond box. Golf Galaxy wasn't even a HarMar tenant, it came from a Cleveland Avenue location, but it chose the same Fairview Avenue strip anyway. That's three separate retailers, two different origin points, one shared destination. Rosedale isn't just outlasting HarMar. It's actively pulling retail toward its address on Fairview.

Axios put the underlying logic simply: Roseville has long drawn shoppers from both downtowns, plus St. Paul's Como and Midway neighborhoods, plus Northeast Minneapolis. That regional pull hasn't gone away. It's just consolidating around one side of town instead of two.

Meanwhile, Rosedale Keeps Adding

While HarMar bleeds tenants, Rosedale has been doing the opposite. Dick's Sporting Goods opened its flagship in the rebuilt former Herberger's space in 2024. Von Maur and Macy's remain anchors. Last year the center added a half dozen new tenants including the jewelry brand Kendra Scott, part of what its general manager, Lisa Crain, described as an effort to keep the mall relevant as shopping habits change.

The smaller, stranger addition might matter more for daily foot traffic. Rosedale installed two Pop Mart vending machines selling the viral Labubu stuffed toys, and according to the Star Tribune's June 2026 coverage, that alone drove a real bump in visitors. A shopping center built in 1969 is currently getting a traffic boost from a plush toy, which tells you something about where impulse retail is headed even inside a traditional mall shell.

This month, the lower exterior level of Rosedale picked up a Paris Baguette in the former Panera space, according to the Star Tribune's early August restaurant roundup, joining the chain's Maple Grove location with a Woodbury outpost still to come.

What's New to Eat Beyond the Mall

Not everything worth knowing is happening inside a shopping center. A few spots have reshaped the food map in ways that reward actually driving past them instead of assuming the old business is still there.

• Shinhwa Korean Steakhouse (2181 Snelling Ave N) has been running long enough to expand, opening a second location in Oakdale this July. It's also one of several Twin Cities restaurants that now uses robot servers to assist staff, which is either a novelty or the new normal depending on how many times you've eaten there.
• Ville City Pizza Co. operates inside the Roseville VFW at 1145 Woodhill Dr., serving New York-inspired pies and mozzarella sticks in what might be the least likely setting for a food destination in the city.
• Sprinkles, the soft serve shop that took over the old Lexington Plaza Dairy Queen at 1720 Lexington Ave N, draws a line every summer and shutters for the winter like clockwork.

None of these openings happened because Roseville suddenly needed more restaurants. They happened because specific spaces came open and specific owners bet on specific corners. That's a different kind of change than a mall losing anchors. It's slower, more scattered, and harder to see all at once unless you're paying attention block by block.

The Calendar Still Runs on Schedule

Whatever is happening to the retail map, the parts of Roseville that don't depend on a landlord's decision are running exactly as they have for years. The Roseville Farmers' Market sets up outside Corpus Christi Church at 2131 Fairview Ave N every Tuesday from 8 a.m. to noon, a run that started May 7 and continues through October 29. Rosefest filled Central Park on June 27 with fireworks, road closures along Lexington Avenue North, and enough foot traffic that the city added extra bike racks this year. The Frank Rog Amphitheater's lunchtime concert series just wrapped its run on August 8, though the evening "Live at the Rog" series keeps going later into the summer.

Coming up next month, the Wild Rice Festival returns to Central Park on the third Saturday in September, with Native American dancers, hands-on apple cider pressing, wild rice harvesting demonstrations, and wild rice soup and fry bread for sale. It's been a fixture long enough that it doesn't depend on which anchor store is open across town.

Why the Two-Track Story Matters If You Live Here

Roseville right now is really two different stories running at the same time. One building type, the enclosed mall built for a shopping pattern from the 1960s, is losing tenants and possibly its entire structure by 2028. Another format, the open-air strip and lifestyle center, is absorbing those same tenants and adding new ones. Independent restaurants are filling gaps that have nothing to do with either mall's fortunes. And the civic institutions, the church parking lot market, the park amphitheater, the VFW hall, keep operating regardless of what JLL puts in a brochure.

If you've been navigating this city by memory, half of what you remember has a new address and the other half never moved at all. Worth knowing before you drive to the wrong side of Snelling looking for a store that's actually three minutes away on Fairview.

None of this changes what your home is worth on paper, but it does change what it's like to live where you already do. If you're curious how shifts like these, or your own home's condition and systems, factor into its current value, Curt Adams offers a Request a Free Home Valuation for Roseville homeowners who want a read grounded in decades of Twin Cities construction and market experience, not a generic online estimate.