For Jon Davis, buying the mall is an opportunity to give back to the community
By Anelia K. Dimitrova
It’s time to say goodbye to College Square Mall as you’ve known it for years.
That’s because it is the time to celebrate its successor, The Mall at College Square, an energized, community-focused entity that will emerge thanks to the commitment of Jon Davis, the owner of Slumberland, and his family.
So mark March 11, 2026, as the day The Mall at College Square was born.
Small as it may seem at first glance, the name change reflects the big difference local ownership makes.
This is the first time since the mall’s grand opening in 1969 that the property has a Cedar Falls-based owner.
On Wednesday, Jon and his family finally breathed a sigh of relief when the transfer of ownership was completed. That closed the chapter of corporate history and ushered in a new approach, opportunity and future for the mall and the town.
Jon says the sale opens a new leaf as the mall will be governed by local decisions whose impact will benefit the community at large.
Cedar Falls Mayor Danny Laudick lauded the important move.
“This type of local reinvestment is part of what makes Cedar Falls such a great place to live,” Laudick told me recently. “Beyond the economic value of it, the mall area is a passionate topic that residents have voiced both hopes and concerns about for years.
“The Davis family is making a significant commitment to Cedar Falls by bringing it back under local ownership, and I’m looking forward to what opportunities that now makes possible.”
How it happened
Jon’s decision to purchase the mall was not a difficult one – he knew he wanted to acquire the property as soon as he was done with the renovation of his Slumberland store, which is in the same area as the mall.
He said he wanted to put his money and his intention where his heart is, right here, in Cedar Falls, so buying the mall fulfilled that aspiration.
“We want to rebrand the mall to show that this time, it’s different,” Jon told me. “Once we take over and create the environment, all kinds of people will see the opportunity of joining.”
Enabling Jon in this pursuit and helping cheer him on are his dad, Dick Davis, the family patriarch and the original owner of Slumberland; his son Keenan, an engineer-turned-Slumberland-store manager, and his son-in-law, Chris Jung, a veteran whose logistical talents are put to full use for this big family mission.
These three generations of entrepreneurs have joined forces to envision the transformation of the mall from the dormant space it is now into a hopping place where things happen, people gather and local businesses thrive.
It was Chris, or as Jon calls him, “the new face of the mall,” who came up with the new name and the logo, which reads, “Locally owned. Community focused.”
The new branding will eventually go on the building and in the stand-alone lit up sign facing University Avenue. Several work and personal vehicles will advertise the new look and motto to spread and reinforce the message – there’s a new vision for a vibrant mall, and a local family will be championing it.
On a recent Thursday, I chatted with Jon and his team at the Slumberland store to find out how it all happened and what the future of the mall looks like.
This was my first time meeting the family and I found it heartwarming, especially in retrospect, that they all wanted to be a part of the interview, as it showed that their bonds run deep.
In business and in life, they hold onto values like hard work, respect and focus on family. Jon’s office tells that story eloquently – it is filled with family photos, framed newspaper clippings of milestone moments and kid drawings, among other things. A poster-sized tape measure on the wall there shows the notches where Jon measures the height of his grandkids. A good grandpa keeps track of the family’s growth, a good businessman keeps track of growing the business.
And Jon is both.
A low-key guy whose presence elicits confidence, he is soft-spoken and sincere, but don’t expect him to spare you the truth as he speaks his mind.
He didn’t want to see the mall torn down, similar to the plight of the malls in other communities, he told me, so he stepped up to lift it from its current state into a space the community craves and deserves.
“I am saddened by cities wanting to tear these malls down as the only way to redevelop,” he said. “The mall walkers and the Vintage Fest prove this Cedar Falls community wants a vibrant, indoor gathering place to meet, shop and eat.”
In fact, during Iowa Vintage Fest, a Feb. 28 event, when vendors from Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin converged on the mall for the first Cedar Falls vintage fest, the crowd packed the west side of the mall wall to wall. Against the backdrop of empty storefronts, the pop-up vintage businesses in the mall that day drew college students, families with young and teenage kids, as well as retired folks, all united by their love for repurposed clothing and jewelry.
If there was any doubt that the mall could be a magnet for the community, the fest showed it clearly.
Commitment to the community
Jon’s record speaks for itself – he bought Slumberland from his dad in the late 1990s, and has since sold all of his other businesses in Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin in order to invest in Cedar Falls. This is the place where his two adult children and his 11 grandkids live, this is the place where he wants to keep the family and the community growing.
“We work here every day,” he said. “We made this beautiful, and we won lots of awards for the parking lot (of Slumberland), and so, my interest is just making the rest of it beautiful, like we made this beautiful.”
During our interview, Dick brimmed with fatherly pride, smiling when Jon spoke and occasionally chiming in to elaborate on an important point.
“I know he’s feeling a sense of giving back to the community, because that place has never been locally owned,” Dick said. “It’s always been owned by somebody else. This is ideal for us. It is a big deal for the whole community that a local person is stepping up. ”
The renovation of the Slumberland building served as an inspiration for mall purchase
It was fitting that the interview took place at the Slumberland store at College Square, as it turns out that that very building served as an inspiration for the eventual purchase of the mall.
The family planted their footprint in the College Square neighborhood in 2016, when Jon bought and started renovating the former Hy-Vee store, which had been sitting vacant for eight years in order to bring his furniture business under one roof in that location.
In 2015, when the City of Cedar Falls made public its plans to overhaul University Avenue and install roundabouts, it dawned on Jon that the visibility and accessibility of the former grocery store building might be a great site for Slumberland.
“I just thought to myself, I ought to be there,” he said.
So Jon bought the building in February of 2016, and after “a good eight months of destruction,” the extensive renovation was complete and Slumberland opened at 6607 University Avenue on July 1, 2017.
It took some time to add long-term tenants to the spaces unoccupied by Slumberland, but the vision to invest in developing that end of College Square paid off. Eventually three permanent tenants opened storefronts there – Trinkets and Togs, Scratch Cupcakery with all of their baking operations and Cindy Lou’s Barbecue.
Keenan, Jon’s son, said making the decision to purchase the mall came down to this:
“It’s one of those things, we’re just doing what God’s telling us to do,” Keenan said. “We’re just being open to the right path and the right doors being open and being available. And these opportunities have kind of presented themselves in a way where it’s like, boy, this is gonna be hard. Man, it’s the right decision. That’s where we came down.”
Jon said the family has special memories of going to the mall for trick or treating, Christmas and concerts over the years. That emotional connection, too, played a role in the persistence with which Jon pursued the purchase.
What’s in store for the Mall at College Square?
The timing is right for a new vision of the mall, Chris added. The goal is to allow a whole new grassroots culture to emerge around the mall’s offerings for shopping, dining and entertainment. It will offer different attractions than downtown Cedar Falls and the surrounding communities.
“We’re here to complement all of our main streets,” he said. “We haven’t really had a good community gathering place that the mall offers. If we can take this mall and make it that community focused and community driven, how beautiful is that?”
There is no shortage of ideas when the conversation turns to what might work.
Above all, Jon wants to reinforce the message that the community will be listened to and its interests and wishes will be the main guiding principle.
He sees the mall as an integral part of the College Square neighborhood, which is different than thinking about the mall as a functional entity.
This opens up the possibility for a conversation with the city, Jon said, to establish a district for that area, similar to the downtown district or College Hill, where there are incentives to continue to develop the area.
“The mall just fell apart on the neighborhood,” Jon said.
Ideas for the spaces in the mall
For starters, Jon says they will create low-risk opportunities for entrepreneurs to open pop-up stores and explore the feasibility of their ideas with three- or six-month leases.
Another idea is to work with educational institutions to open entrepreneurial labs, where students can learn and practice portable skills.
Still another is to connect with the food truck community to fill the existing kitchen spots in the mall and rotate some of the food choices.
Turning the former movie theater into an entertainment center is also under consideration.
And, in the “chill-est” of news, an ice-cream shop will be moving in right after spring break in the original Baskin Robbins 31 flavors space.
Jon said that from day one, they would start fixing what’s broken. Simple but noticeable changes will happen right away, with, for example, expanding the walking hours in the mall, which is great news for early morning risers, like Jon’s dad.
“We are store people, we are not landlord people,” Jon said. “I am so excited for stores to come. I am accidentally becoming a landlord, it’s so much fun to give people a chance to try out their ideas.”
Mall memories and more
When College Square Mall opened on Nov. 12, 1969, it was a big cultural event for the whole area, with Cedar Falls Mayor William W. McKinley, the city’s 39th mayor, and Waterloo Mayor Lloyd L. Turner cutting the ribbon.
At the time, College Square Mall was reported to be the largest mall in the state. Among the stores with shingles at College Square Mall then were Zales Jewelers, Maurice’s and Jo-Ann Fabrics.
Coincidentally, Jon’s father, Dick, opened his Slumberland store in Black Hawk Village two weeks after the mall celebrated its launch.
In the mid 1980s, Walmart moved in and there was no partition between the store and the mall, so shoppers could flow back and forth, increasing the foot traffic. Walmart closed that location in 2003 and eventually, Hy-Vee renovated that space for its use.
In 2021, Ashley Furniture moved in and now anchors the east part of the mall.
As the mall changed ownership, and technology pushed shopping to clicks on phone screens rather than browsing in brick-and-mortar stores, College Square declined significantly.
Currently, only 13 of the 55 store spaces in the mall are occupied.
“Only 42 more spots left,” Jon joked.
That number and the enormity of the project do not intimidate Jon and his team.
They have rolled up their sleeves and expect to work hard and keep going.
Recently, Chris moved into the business office in the mall where he will be working from.
There, he found an unexpected treasure trove of newspaper clippings, printed pictures, programs, and film slides that document the excitement of the opening of the stores, the reconstructions, the decline of the mall and the efforts to revive it.
Looking through the albums and programs in the boxes, and a CD of the renovations, put Chris and Jon in a reflective mood.
Jon said that further down the road, he would pay homage to the history of the mall with a mural that would show the timeline of its existence.
He knows it wasn’t just a structure that he purchased along University Avenue. A whole museum of memories came with it – all the glory of celebrating the grand opening in 1969, all the stores’ entries and exits, all the concerts, all the invisible and intangible wealth of personal and community lore that has enriched the space over the years – all of that came along with the purchase.
A tribute to those who supported them
Finding themselves the custodians of so much history overwhelmed Jon and Chris for a moment during the interview.
So I asked who helped support them in their journey.
For Chris, it was his wife, Kelsey, Jon’s daughter.
“She’s just always there to help push me through,” he said. “There’s times when things are getting to me. She really can help pull me out and help me reset my mindset.”
And then the army veteran, who served overseas, gave way to the boy who was raised without a father figure.
“I didn’t grow up with a father,” Chris said, his voice trembling slightly for a brief moment. “Jon has just been really fantastic, having that other figure that I never had. Just guiding, loving, correcting when necessary. I’m super grateful to just be ‘adopted’ into this family.”
For Jon, whose upbringing meant watching his dad work hard at running his furniture store, family support is essential to success.
“My parents started everything,” he said. “My mom and dad moved out here when I was 5 years old and started Slumberland down here. He’s been retired since the late 90s, but I talk to him all the time, every day. They still live right here. My dad couldn’t be more excited about this. So my dad is my biggest cheerleader. My mom’s my biggest cheerleader, and my daughter is my biggest cheerleader. We work all the time, we play all the time, we do everything all the time. It’s all mixed together. Working nights, working weekends, you know, running stores. It’s crazy. So, it’s perfect.”
Then Jon’s nostalgia gave way to the enormity of what’s ahead, as it had started to sink in.
“When a dream turns into a hope and then this hope and dream become a reality, it’s time to get to work,” Jon said. “I can’t wait to get to work. Let’s go. We have bought businesses before but we have never done anything like this before, this is so emotional because this is the community’s mall, we grew up in this mall.”
