Drive past the west end of The Gardens Mall on PGA Boulevard and you have seen the same dead storefront since Sears closed its doors in February 2024, no liquidation sale, just gone one day. On September 10, 2026, the Palm Beach Gardens City Council gave final approval to replace it with a two-story Dick's House of Sport. Local news over the past year has revisited the debate over whether Dick's would sell guns in the mall. That debate was one part of a longer story that began with Sears' proposed sublease. The mall's owner, The Forbes Company, and Dick's later litigated the proposed deal in federal court.
Earlier Plans and Public Debate
Sears had been at Gardens Mall since it opened in 1988, one of three original anchors alongside Burdines and the second Macy's location in Florida. In 2011, with the department store chain already shrinking nationally, Sears proposed subleasing part of its second floor to Dick's Sporting Goods. The mall's owner, The Forbes Company, refused to sign off, and the Palm Beach Gardens City Council backed that refusal with a resolution barring anchor tenants from subdividing their space without approval from both Forbes and the city.
Sears sued Forbes in 2014 and added the city to the lawsuit the following year. Concerns about Dick's selling firearms surfaced during this period, sharpened after a 2017 shooting in the mall's parking lot. In June 2017, Florida's Fourth District Court of Appeal ruled the city's resolution unconstitutional, finding it improperly interfered with Sears' lease rights. Dick's phased out gun sales across its stores after the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, removing the objection that had dominated public debate for years.
By that logic, the deal should have closed. It did not.
The Federal Lawsuit and Settlement
According to Stet News, even after Sears won its court fight and Dick's dropped firearms, Forbes still refused to sign the paperwork the city needed to approve the sublease. Dick's then sued Forbes directly; the case proceeded in federal court in West Palm Beach starting around 2019, after the gun controversy had faded from headlines.
That case was still active when Sears finally closed its doors in February 2024. On September 6, 2024, just ten days before trial, U.S. District Judge Bruce Reinhart granted Dick's partial summary judgment on two key points. The case settled two weeks later, after three days of trial including jury selection, according to court records reviewed by Stet News. The people who showed up for that settlement conference tell you how much was riding on it: Nathan Forbes, managing partner of The Forbes Company, William Taubman, president of the Taubman Realty Group, and Edward Stack, executive chairman of Dick's Sporting Goods, all in the room together.
Within a year of the settlement, Gardens Venture LLC filed a new development application, this time with Forbes and Dick's on the same side.
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1988 | Gardens Mall opens with Sears as an original anchor |
| 2011 | Sears proposes subleasing space to Dick's; Forbes refuses |
| 2012 | City Council resolution blocks anchor subdivision without Forbes and city sign-off |
| 2014-2015 | Sears sues Forbes, then adds the city to the lawsuit |
| 2017 | Appellate court voids the city resolution; gun sales remain a public objection |
| 2018 | Dick's phases out firearm sales chainwide after the Parkland shooting |
| Feb. 2024 | Sears closes its Gardens Mall store after 36 years |
| Sept. 2024 | Dick's and Forbes settle their federal lawsuit mid-trial |
| June 2025 | Redevelopment application filed with the city |
| Aug. 6, 2026 | City Council votes 5-0 for preliminary approval |
| Sept. 10, 2026 | Council gives final approval |
You can watch the public record show a straight line from application to approval in a little over a year. The federal case proceeded through a judge's ruling and a settlement conference.
What Is Actually Going In
The approved project replaces the old Sears building with a 140,000-square-foot, two-story Dick's House of Sport, the same format the retailer has built in Miami and Tampa, featuring an indoor rock climbing wall, batting cages, and golf simulator bays. An 18,000-square-foot outdoor athletic field is part of the plan as well, and according to Dick's own real estate team, it will be accessible during store hours for organized events and general use, not walled off as a private amenity.
The project also relocates Arhaus Furniture, which currently sits near Bloomingdale's, into a new space on the mall's south side facing PGA Boulevard, adding roughly 47,000 square feet of additional retail space in the process. Combined, the redevelopment adds a net 61,467 square feet to the mall, bringing its total footprint to about 1.45 million square feet, all without adding a single new parking space. Instead, the city agreed to lower the mall's required parking ratio from 4.5 spaces per 1,000 square feet to 4.0, based on a traffic study the developer commissioned. That is worth remembering the next time you circle the lot during the holidays looking for a spot near Nordstrom.
Dick's told council members it hopes to start construction in early 2027 if final approval held, and it did. Current projections point to a spring 2028 opening, which means the fenced-off Sears wing is likely to be part of the mall's landscape for another year and a half before anything new opens its doors.
"This is obviously a huge recreation area, and Dick's partnership as you come into the community will be really special for us," council member Bert Premuroso said during the August vote. "We'd really love to foster that, and our recreation and parks team are phenomenal, so that's going to be a great partnership."
What This Means for Your Next Trip to the Mall
If you shop at Gardens Mall regularly, the practical takeaway is timing, not disruption. Nothing changes at the mall this fall. The vote that just passed clears the legal path, but the physical work, demolishing the old Sears building and constructing a new two-story anchor, is not scheduled to begin until early 2027, with the doors not expected to open until spring 2028.
What is worth watching in the meantime is the west side of Palm Beach Gardens, where the retail map has been shifting in a different way. As we covered earlier this year, the new Avenir Town Center off Northlake Boulevard brought a full-size Publix, Seppe Pizza Bar's first Florida location, and a cluster of other openings that gave residents west of the Turnpike a reason to stop driving east for groceries and dinner. The Gardens Mall story is the opposite motion: an eastern, PGA Boulevard fixture now moving toward redevelopment after the Sears closure, adding square footage rather than creating a new center of gravity. Both are signs of a city investing in the retail experience its residents already use, just at different ends of town and on very different timelines.
The former Sears space's timeline includes city approvals and the federal lawsuit that settled in 2024.
Following stories like this one is part of how we stay useful to people who already live in Palm Beach Gardens, not just people looking to move here. If you are curious what a redevelopment like this, or any shift in the neighborhood, might mean for your own property's value down the road, The Schilling Team is always glad to talk it through. When you are ready for a number, you can Get Your Instant Home Valuation any time.
