On a Wednesday in February, a photographer for the Brainerd Dispatch took a picture of the east hallway at Westgate Mall. It was a long, quiet run of storefronts that ended at Ashley Furniture. Payless Shoes, GNC and Claire's were already dark. Across from Tradehome Shoes, the Friends of the Brainerd Library book sale had packed its stock into boxes. The Dispatch described that space as one that "generated considerable foot traffic for the mall."
Eight months later, that hallway is mostly gone. A big new store has taken its place, and the store has no door to the inside of the mall. Every addition to Westgate this fall faces the parking lot. The mall opened around 1985 and was built to pull people inside. It is now adding stores you can only enter from the lot.
The east wing emptied first
The east side lost its stores one at a time. The Brainerd Dispatch dated JoAnn Fabrics' closing to spring 2025. Claire's left too. GNC closed on Friday, Dec. 5, 2025. As the Dispatch reported, the manager pointed to lower traffic in the east wing after JoAnn and Claire's left, along with falling sales and a lease coming due.
Ollie's Bargain Outlet is what came next for that empty stretch. A building permit under review in February described a store of 25,000 to 35,000 square feet. It runs west from Ashley Furniture into part of the old JoAnn space and takes over the center hallway and walkway on the east side. The Dispatch noted that the layout would mirror the mall's west end, where Harbor Freight and Dunham's sit. A September update in the Brainerd Dispatch stated it plainly: "Ollie's will open to the exterior to the mall without access inside."
That makes the inside of the mall shorter. A large store with its own outside door now holds both ends, and the walkable hallway sits between them.
The next three weeks on the calendar
Here is what's scheduled, in order. These dates come from reporting published before today, so treat them as planned dates:
- Now through Halloween. Spirit Halloween is back in the former JoAnn space for a second season, according to the Dispatch.
- Oct. 19. 7 Brew expects to open its drive-thru on Highway 210, in front of the mall.
- Oct. 28. Ollie's Bargain Outlet holds its grand opening, according to the Dispatch's Oct. 2 Biz Buzz.
Spirit Halloween sharing the old JoAnn space with the arriving Ollie's says a lot about the east wing right now. A seasonal shop is filling space until a permanent tenant moves in.
The parking lot is the new storefront
7 Brew may be the clearest sign of the new direction. Its building is 510 square feet, and it was lifted onto its base by crane in September. It has no walk-up window and no indoor seating, according to the Dispatch. The company says it plans to hire 75 people. It sits on a 1.1-acre outlot. When Baxter City Council approved the conditional-use permits on Feb. 17, the Dispatch named Westgate Mall as the landowner and Matt Development Co. as the applicant. So the mall is earning money from a business whose customers never get out of the car.
You can see the same pattern a few minutes away. Panera Bread is nearly ready in front of Costco. It has a patio and a drive-thru, and it's reached from Elder Drive and Forthun Road by a private drive around the edge of the Costco lot. The Dispatch lists hours of 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Sunday. It reports only that the restaurant should open "this fall."
New food in west Baxter is going up on small pads at the edges of big parking lots. Those lots were sized for the stores of an earlier era.
The fight over one too-big parking lot
The city's most detailed debate about this change involved Five Below and the former J.C. Penney building off Glory Road. J.C. Penney opened there in 2008 after moving from northeast Brainerd. It closed in July 2017. HomeGoods opened in the renovated building on Nov. 19, 2022, and Hobby Lobby followed on June 9, 2023.
Five Below wanted to build onto the side of that building, on the south parking lot. The plan would remove 52 parking spaces. City planner Matthew Gindele said there was plenty of unused parking in the lots east of the businesses. At the council meeting, as the Dispatch reported, he described the lot as oversized for the amount of retail space and said staff saw the setback variance as "a good trade-off to make better use of the property and support the city's tax base."
The council's debate centered on how close a new building should sit to Glory Road. Council member Mark Cross put it this way:
"I think a lot of us agree that we have too much parking in a lot of our projects right now. My problem is starting to do variances on front yards of commercial properties, especially this one. It's along Glory Drive. It's a major entrance into our business district on the west there."
The vote on March 17 was 3-2 against the variances. Mayor Darrel Olson voted in favor of the project and called it infill. Five Below then made the building smaller. On April 7 the council approved a conditional use permit for joint access at 7352 Glory Road, and the Dispatch quoted the city saying, "Their plan is to move forward without the variances." A smaller variance for the trash enclosure went to the Planning and Zoning Commission on Aug. 12. The council approved it on Aug. 18 in Resolution 2026-064.
As of today, we haven't found any report that construction has started or any opening date. What we do know is that the store will go on pavement that was once Penney's parking. Ollie's and 7 Brew show the same trend at Westgate: shopping in west Baxter is moving toward the parking lots.
Where the foot traffic went
Some of the activity that used to fill the inside of Westgate has moved somewhere else entirely.
The Friends of the Brainerd Public Library book sale lost its mall space to the Ollie's project. The group's own site says it moved to a smaller location at 215 Washington Street in Brainerd on July 15, 2026. Donations are accepted Tuesdays from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., with drop-off parking in front of the door. The site says there is now very little room to display free items and no room to store them. It sends shoppers to the group's Facebook page for current sale dates.
Brekken's announced in August 2024 that it was leaving Westgate for downtown Brainerd, according to the Dispatch. Downtown keeps picking up new storefronts. Dal Furniture and Restoration opened on South Eighth Street on Oct. 1, in the former Fusion Jewelry Studio building, after two years of working out of a garage.
The mall's newest non-retail tenant follows the outward pattern too. Pitch 2 Pitch, an indoor baseball and softball training facility, opened behind Harbor Freight on Jan. 19, 2026. People go there for practice. It doesn't depend on shoppers wandering the hallway.
Finding your way around this fall
Here's what changes for regular errands:
- Ollie's is reached from outside. The Dispatch says it will have no entrance from the mall's interior. If you park by your old east-side entrance, you may have to walk around.
- 7 Brew is drive-thru only. There's no window to walk up to.
- Panera is reached from Elder Drive or Forthun Road, using the private drive around the Costco lot.
- Book donations for the Friends of the Library now go to 215 Washington Street in Brainerd, on Tuesdays.
- The walkable inside of the mall now runs between the big boxes at each end, with Harbor Freight and Dunham's on the west and Ollie's beside Ashley Furniture on the east.
Shoppers will find the stores they need with their own doors and parking. The hallway in that February photo is now mostly Ollie's sales floor.
At Pederson Team, we follow changes like these because they shape the errands behind every lake weekend, from the Saturday hardware run to the coffee stop on Highway 210. If you're weighing how close a cabin on the Whitefish Chain or Ossawinnamakee should be to Baxter's shopping, we'd be glad to walk through it with you. Schedule a Lakeside Consultation.
