The Old Sears at The Gardens Mall Is Becoming a Ballfield. What's Approved, and What's Still Unknown

For years, the Sears end of The Gardens Mall has been the quiet side of the busiest shopping address in northern Palm Beach County. The anchor box has been empty. Its parking lot gets used mostly when the rest of the lot fills up. The building faces PGA Boulevard like a store that closed and never left.

That corner now has an approved future, and it won't look like the rest of the mall. In September, the Palm Beach Gardens City Council approved a plan to replace Sears with a DICK'S House of Sport, according to WPBF. The plan includes an 18,500-square-foot outdoor athletic field, 40-foot light poles and a Palm Tran transfer station with six bus bays. Most of what the city approved happens outdoors, where the mall has always been just parking.

A Vote That Took Fifteen Years

The plan is older than most people would guess. WPTV reported that the redevelopment goes back to 2011 and stalled several times. Negotiations stopped in 2017 over whether the retailer would sell guns. WPTV also reported that DICK'S Sporting Goods has since stopped selling guns in its stores, which removed the main sticking point. WPBF made the same point more briefly: DICK'S tried to open at the mall more than a decade ago, and those plans fell through.

This time the approvals moved quickly. The Forbes Company and its land planner, Urban Design Studio, presented the plan to City Council on August 6, 2026. By then, city staff had recommended approval and the Planning, Zoning and Appeals Board had voted 6-0 in favor. Council approved Ordinances 19 and 20 unanimously on first reading. The city's September 10 agenda scheduled both ordinances for second reading and adoption. WPBF's report, updated September 11, says council voted that Thursday to approve the project.

The size of the project is easy to state. The new store is 140,000 square feet over two stories, and the mall adds about 47,000 square feet of other retail. The waivers tell you more about what it will actually look like.

The Waivers Show Where the Change Lands

A waiver is the city agreeing to go past its own development rules for one project. This plan asked for three, and two of them come with numbers.

The fence is twice the usual limit, and the light poles are more than three times it. Neither is something you'd find inside a store. They're there for the field. When the plan was first filed in 2025, WLRN reported that the application listed possible uses for the field. Those included sports clinics, community games, birthday parties, fitness classes, equipment testing and athlete appearances. WPTV's August coverage described the field as a space for community events, recreational leagues, camps and other programs.

Inside, the House of Sport format would bring rock-climbing walls, HitTrax batting cages and VR sports, per the same WPTV report. WPBF described a large athletic field for events and other recreation areas for customers. Put together, this corner of the mall is being designed for people to stay a while and play, which is different from the rest of the building, where people come to shop.

None of the reporting so far says when the field would be open to the public, how late the lights could stay on, or whether local leagues would have regular access. When the August meeting was summarized, staff said landscaping, lighting cutoffs and buffers were covered in the project's planning documents. Staff recommended approval pending final engineering. The details on lighting cutoffs will matter most to people who use PGA Boulevard after dark. They have not been published in any source we found.

Fewer Parking Spaces, Six Bus Bays

The second outdoor change is easier to miss on a site plan, but you'll feel it whenever you park. WPBF reported that the redevelopment would reduce the number of parking spaces at the mall. When the plan was first pitched, Stet News reported that the request added no new spaces and relied on a revised formula for how much parking the mall needs. The final number of spaces has not been published.

In the same plan, the Sears side also gets a new Palm Tran transfer station with six bus bays. A transfer station is where riders switch from one bus route to another. Putting one here makes the mall a stop where bus routes meet. We found no published detail on which routes would use it, where riders transfer today or when the bays would open.

All of this lands on the same stretch of pavement. Part of the old lot becomes a fenced field, part becomes bus bays, and fewer spaces remain for cars. The edge of the mall that has been empty and quiet becomes its busiest outdoor area.

Inside the Mall, the Refresh Has Already Started

The indoor changes are smaller, but they're already open. The Palm Beach Post reported that Levi's opened on August 27 in a first-floor storefront near Saks Fifth Avenue. It's the second Levi's in Palm Beach County, after the outlet store at Tanger Outlets in West Palm Beach. Faherty opened on May 5. Both join a mall of more than 150 shops and restaurants, anchored by Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdale's and Macy's.

The same September 2 report said the mall expects to announce more retailers and at least one new restaurant soon. No names had been made public in any source we found as of mid-October 2026.

The one tenant already tied to the expansion is Arhaus. WLRN reported that it would move into the new retail space on the mall's south side. The rest of the roughly 47,000 square feet has no publicly named tenants yet.

What Has No Date Yet

The council vote settled what can be built. It didn't come with a construction schedule. As of mid-October 2026, we found no published information on:

• When Sears demolition will start, or when construction begins
• A target opening season or year for DICK'S House of Sport
• An opening date for the new south-side retail, including Arhaus's move
• Hours, public-access rules or lighting curfews for the outdoor field
• Which Palm Tran routes will use the six-bay station, and when it opens
• The final parking count once the field and bus bays are built

For now, the Sears building stands as it has for years. The plan has been approved and the redevelopment has been announced, but no construction timeline has been made public.

A new field, a transit stop and fewer parking spaces at the region's largest mall will change how the PGA Boulevard corridor works day to day for the homes around it. If you live nearby and want to know how a project like this might affect the way your home is presented to buyers, Tanya Ajay keeps track of these changes as they move from council agenda to construction. Schedule a Private Consultation, and we'll go over what the approved plan means for your property.