{"id":40467,"date":"2026-06-16T08:05:50","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T13:05:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thexradio.com\/news\/?p=40467"},"modified":"2026-06-16T14:23:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T19:23:20","slug":"city-of-effingham-owns-village-square-mall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thexradio.com\/news\/local-news\/40467-city-of-effingham-owns-village-square-mall\/","title":{"rendered":"City of Effingham owns Village Square Mall"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"pdfprnt-buttons pdfprnt-buttons-post pdfprnt-top-right\"><a href=\"javascript: window.print()\" class=\"pdfprnt-button pdfprnt-button-print\" target=\"_self\" ><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thexradio.com\/news\/wp-content\/plugins\/pdf-print\/images\/print.png\" alt=\"image_print\" title=\"Print Content\" \/><span class=\"pdfprnt-button-title pdfprnt-button-print-title\">Print<\/span><\/a><\/div><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The Square Effingham has given an update on the Village Square Mall.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Their dreams to develop rejuvenation and bring jobs, new business, and tourism to the south side of Effingham have come to an end.\u00a0 This news comes as a result of the almost 17 months it took for the 5th District Court of Appeals to rule in the ownership matter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">During the time it took to make a ruling, the mall has further deteriorated, the costs to renovate have increased, and the momentum with potential tenants has waned.\u00a0 The result is that the Square Effingham will no longer be moving forward with their plans and have instead transferred their ownership to the City of Effingham.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">They are grateful for the large amount of community support for their vision.\u00a0 They are glad they didn&#8217;t walk away from the fight for ownership.\u00a0 If they had given up, the mall would have reverted back to the previous owner, losing the opportunity for the mall to be locally owned.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">They view this venture overall as a win for Effingham.\u00a0 They are disappointed and frustrated at the outcome, but state that their vision was real and support was substantial.\u00a0 Unfortunately, it was just not meant to be for Team Square.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">We will continue to follow this story, as there are amazing businesses still located in the Village Square Mall and they await what the future will hold for them in the coming months, as the City of Effingham maintains ownership of the Village Square Mall.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Square Effingham has given an update on the Village Square Mall. Their dreams to develop rejuvenation and bring jobs, new business, and tourism to the south side of Effingham [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":31004,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>City of Effingham owns Village Square Mall - Effingham&#039;s News and Sports Leader, 979XFM and KJ Country 102.3<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Effingham&#039;s News and Sports Leader\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thexradio.com\/news\/local-news\/40467-city-of-effingham-owns-village-square-mall\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"City of Effingham owns Village Square Mall - 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