Ford City Mall is a shopping center located on the Southwest Side of Chicago in the West Lawn neighborhood at 76th Street and Cicero Avenue. Opened in 1965, Ford City is the largest enclosed mall in Chicago outside of downtown. Anchored by JCPenney, the mall contains more than 135 stores and restaurants including Applebee’s, Bath & Body Works, The Children’s Place, Foot Locker, Zales Jewelers, Marshalls, Old Navy, Victoria’s Secret/PINK, and Ross Dress for Less. There are several out parcels including a 14-theater AMC Theatres. Ford City Mall is managed by Mid-America Asset Managements. History Construction started in 1942 to build a defense plant. Approximately 17,000 workers were employed. This caused the southwest side of the city to become more populated as more people were moving there for work. By October, Building No. 1 was finished. Testing of aircraft engines to be used for the B-29 bomber began. By the spring of 1943, 10 buildings, made of steel, concrete and wood, had been constructed. The building covered approximately . The largest building was Building No. 4. It covered , and it was built out of reinforced concrete. The plant contained of underground piping and of cables and wires for water and power. By December 1945, the plant was left vacant due to the end of World War II. The government attempted to sell it without success. It was later retrofitted for automobile production for Tucker Corporation and then Ford Motor Company. The building remained a white elephant until the Korean War, when it was reopened to build airplane engines for the war effort, under contract from Ford Motor Company. The Ford company modernized everything inside the building, employing nearly 12,000 people. The building closed again in 1959. In 1961, the government sold it to Harry F Chaddick, who along with other investors planned to develop a shopping center. Some buildings were torn down to make room for parking lots. The buildings that remained were remodeled to attract retail tenants. Developers divided the building into a separate portion for the mall. The mall opened in 1965 as Ford City. The mall consists of two halves - a strip mall and enclosed mall. The strip mall portion is connected to the enclosed mall by a tunnel called "The Connection". It utilizes the basement between the severed halves of the buildings directly below the parking lot. The Connection was originally called Peacock Alley