Indoor Theme Park in a Former Macy’s: What the Box Allows
On October 24, 2026, WJON News reported that signs had gone up on the former Macy’s store at Crossroads Center in St. Cloud, Minnesota. The signs announce Maui’s Indoor Theme Park, a family entertainment concept attributed to Jester FEC, an operator based in Lexington, Kentucky.
If the project proceeds as the signage suggests, a roughly 100,000 sq ft (about 9,300 m²) department store box becomes an indoor theme park. The same company runs the Malibu Jack’s chain, whose flagship in Lexington fills 135,000 sq ft (about 12,500 m²) with nine indoor attractions.
The announcement is thin on specifics. There is no opening date, no published floor plan, and no equipment list. WJON contacted Jester FEC for details before publishing and received no response.
Thin announcements still carry useful signals. The attraction mix named on the signage, the dimensions of the box, and the operator’s existing parks together show what a department store conversion can absorb, and what it cannot.
This article separates what is confirmed from what is not, then walks through the building questions that decide whether a retail anchor becomes an entertainment venue or stays empty.
1. What Was Announced in St. Cloud on October 24
WJON’s report is the only source so far. According to the article, the information about the operator came from the contractor working at the site, not from Jester FEC itself. That provenance matters when you weigh how much confidence to place in each detail.
The attractions named on the signage are go-karts, bowling, laser tag, virtual reality, bumper cars, a kids’ play zone, and arcade games. WJON describes St. Cloud as the first Minnesota location for the company. No opening date appears on the signs.
One detail does not line up across sources, and it is worth flagging rather than smoothing over. WJON lists Jester FEC’s Malibu Jack’s and Maui’s parks in Kentucky, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Colorado. The operator’s own website currently lists five locations in Kentucky (Ashland, Lexington, Louisville), Indiana (Lafayette), and Texas (North Richland Hills). We could not reconcile the two lists, so treat the exact footprint of the chain as unverified.
| Item | Status | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Indoor theme park planned at the former Macy’s, Crossroads Center | Reported | WJON News, October 24, 2026; signage on site |
| Operator is Jester FEC of Lexington, Kentucky | Reported | WJON, citing the site contractor |
| Attractions: go-karts, bowling, laser tag, VR, bumper cars, kids’ play zone, arcade | Reported | WJON, describing the posted signs |
| First Minnesota location for the operator | Reported | WJON |
| Opening date | Not announced | No date on signage; operator did not respond to WJON |
| Floor plan, park size, equipment list | Not published | Nothing released by the operator |
| Exact current list of the chain’s parks | Conflicting | WJON’s state list differs from the operator’s website |
None of the unconfirmed items is unusual at this stage. Operators often let signage and local coverage do the announcing while lease terms, permits, and fit-out budgets are still moving. The next verifiable signals will probably arrive as building permits, hiring posts, or an operator press release.
2. The Box: 100,000 Sq Ft in a Mall That Sold for $80 Million
The building in question is not an average retail unit. The Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal reported in 2024 that Macy’s occupied about 100,000 sq ft (about 9,300 m²) at Crossroads Center, alongside JCPenney at nearly 168,000 sq ft and Scheels at more than 82,000 sq ft.
| Anchor at Crossroads Center | Reported floor area | Approx. metric |
|---|---|---|
| JCPenney | ~168,000 sq ft | ~15,600 m² |
| Macy’s (the box in question) | ~100,000 sq ft | ~9,300 m² |
| Scheels All Sports | 82,000+ sq ft | 7,600+ m² |
For context, 100,000 sq ft is more than three times the 31,512 sq ft (about 2,930 m²) that Altitude Trampoline Park’s Arlington project reported for its fit-out, and four to five times the footprint of a typical single-court plan such as the 22,000 sq ft (about 2,045 m²) breakdown we published earlier. Anchor boxes are the largest contiguous floor plates in any regional mall, which is exactly why entertainment operators keep taking them.
The mall’s recent history also matters. U.S. Bank Trust Co. sued to foreclose on the property in 2023, alleging the borrower had failed to pay on $83 million of the original $107 million mortgage, with no payments since August 2020, according to the Business Journal. A receiver took control, and the mall sold in April 2024 for $80 million to an entity called Contrarian Crossroads LLC. Leasing and management passed to Spinoso Real Estate Group, the firm the receiver had appointed, per court filings the Business Journal reviewed.
The Macy’s closure itself was no surprise. Macy’s announced in February 2024 that it would close about 150 underproductive stores by the end of 2026 under its “A Bold New Chapter” plan. The current wave covers 14 stores in 12 states, and Fast Company’s published list includes Crossroads Center at 4101 West Division Street, St. Cloud. In other words, the anchor was already scheduled to leave. The indoor theme park arrives to fill a space the landlord knew would empty.
What this sequence shows: receiver, sale, anchor exit, then an entertainment backfill. That order has become a recognizable pattern in secondary-market malls, and we have covered its trampoline-park variant before in how mall anchors become trampoline parks.
3. Why This Attraction Mix Fits a Department Store Box
Look at the named attractions again: go-karts, bowling, laser tag, virtual reality, bumper cars, a kids’ play zone, and arcade games. Not one of them needs the single thing a department store box usually lacks: vertical clearance. That is not a coincidence. It is what makes the mix plausible for this building.
Department store boxes are built as wide-span, low-rise floor plates with columns on a regular grid, a heavy slab, and ceiling heights set by merchandising floors rather than rides. A trampoline court, a tall slide tower, or a high ropes course needs clear height measured to the lowest beam, duct, and sprinkler line, which is why those conversions are pickier about the building. The mix announced in St. Cloud works around that constraint almost entirely.
| Attraction | Core building requirement | Fit in a department store box |
|---|---|---|
| Go-karts (electric) | Large flat floor; column grid shapes the track; battery charging space; tire wear management | Strong fit, if the column spacing allows a track with usable corners |
| Bowling | Long straight runs; precise slab flatness and levelness; vibration separation | Conditional; slab work is often the hidden cost |
| Laser tag | Controlled lighting; can build a multi-level arena upward from the floor | Strong fit; works under modest ceilings |
| Virtual reality / motion theater | Compact footprint; significant power; low height | Strong fit |
| Bumper cars | Flat floor and a controlled arena | Strong fit |
| Kids’ play zone | Soft contained play structure; sightlines for supervision; party seating nearby | Strong fit; equipment of this class falls under standards such as ASTM F1918 (soft contained play equipment) within that standard’s jurisdiction |
| Arcade | Power, data, and climate control | Strong fit; goes almost anywhere |
Two entries deserve a closer look because they are the ones that break budgets. Bowling lanes are precision assemblies that demand a flat, level slab; a retail slab built for racking and forklifts rarely meets that spec without grinding or a self-leveling overlay, and the cost scales with every additional lane. Go-kart tracks are shaped by the column grid: a box with columns on a tight rhythm produces a tight track, which changes the ride and the throughput. Neither problem is visible in an announcement. Both show up in the fit-out budget.
To be explicit about the boundary: Jester FEC has not published a floor plan for St. Cloud, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. The table above describes what each attraction generally requires, not what this specific park will contain.
4. What the Operator’s Existing Parks Show
Jester FEC’s flagship, Malibu Jack’s Lexington, publishes its own numbers on the company website: 135,000 sq ft (about 12,500 m²), nine indoor attractions, 16 full bowling lanes, and an arcade with more than 100 games. The chain’s other listed parks are in Ashland and Louisville in Kentucky, Lafayette in Indiana, and North Richland Hills in Texas.
Two observations follow from those published facts, and both are derived rather than stated by the operator.
First, the flagship is bigger than the St. Cloud box. Nine attractions across 135,000 sq ft works out to roughly one signature attraction per 15,000 sq ft (derived from the published attraction count and stated area, not released as a planning rule). A 100,000 sq ft box at that density would host six to seven signature attractions, which lines up reasonably well with the seven attraction categories on the signage. The arithmetic is a sanity check, not a design brief.
Second, the company runs two brands. Malibu Jack’s parks follow the large-format, multi-attraction formula described above. Maui’s appears to be the second concept, and St. Cloud is its first Minnesota site according to WJON. For chain operators, opening a second brand into an anchor box is a familiar move: the box gives them a large column-free plate in an established retail corridor, and the second brand lets them tune the attraction mix to the specific building rather than force the flagship formula into it.
What the operator has not disclosed is the lease, the investment figure, or the timeline for St. Cloud. Anyone modeling this project should treat those three numbers as unknown and wait for verifiable filings rather than estimates.
5. The Landlord Side: Backfill Math After an Anchor Leaves
From the mall’s perspective, the calculation differs from the operator’s. An empty anchor keeps costing money, and the replacement has to beat that number. The structure of the decision looks like this:
Annual carrying cost of a vacant anchor ≈ real estate taxes + insurance + common area maintenance share + debt service allocated to the vacant box Value of an entertainment backfill offer ≈ base rent + percentage rent above a revenue threshold + traffic spillover captured by inline tenants
The backfill is rational for the landlord when the offer value exceeds the carrying cost by enough to compensate for the alternative of holding the space for a different tenant. No public figures exist for rent at Crossroads Center, so we give the structure and not the numbers. Inventing a rent figure would be worse than admitting the gap.
What the public record does show is pressure. The mall went through foreclosure, receivership, and a court-supervised sale at $80 million in April 2024. A property in that position needs its anchor row occupied, because each dark box erodes the traffic that inline tenants pay rent against. Entertainment tenants are among the few categories that can consume 80,000 to 170,000 sq ft in one piece: indoor theme parks, trampoline parks, grocery, fitness, and medical. Among those, entertainment brings evening and weekend traffic that malls prize most.
This is also why the attraction mix announced in St. Cloud matters to landlords elsewhere. A mix that fits the building without structural surgery keeps the fit-out budget in the operator’s pocket and the deal alive. A mix that demands new structural steel or a roof raise often dies in diligence, and the box goes dark again.
6. What a Retail-to-Entertainment Conversion Must Verify First
For investors and operators evaluating a similar conversion, the verification order matters more than the checklist itself, because each item can eliminate attraction classes entirely. This is the sequence we would run before any equipment is priced.
6.1 Clear height at the lowest obstruction
What it decides Which attraction classes are possible. Trampoline courts, tall slide towers, and climbing structures all need clearance measured to the lowest beam, duct, or sprinkler line, not to the deck.
What to verify A measured survey at the lowest points across the full plate, not a single reading. The 22,000 sq ft trampoline park layout breakdown shows how much of the plan follows from this one number. The St. Cloud announcement conveniently avoids the issue with a mix that needs little height, but a trampoline-heavy program would face it head-on.
6.2 Floor flatness, levelness, and load
What it decides Whether bowling and kart infrastructure can be installed without slab remediation, and whether added loads from lanes, mezzanines, and ballast stay inside the original design.
What to verify Original structural drawings, a flatness and levelness survey, and a structural review of any point loads. Slab grinding or overlay across 100,000 sq ft is not a rounding error in the budget.
6.3 Power, ventilation, and heat
What it decides Whether electric kart fleets can charge, arcades and motion theaters can run, and air quality stays acceptable in high-occupancy zones.
What to verify Available electrical capacity against the equipment schedule, and make-up air for spaces that were previously low-occupancy retail.
6.4 Change of use and egress
What it decides Whether the building can legally operate as an entertainment venue. A department store was approved under a retail code path; a family entertainment center changes occupant load assumptions, exit requirements, and fire alarm zoning.
What to verify The local authority’s requirements for the change of use. Equipment standards such as ASTM F2970 (commercial trampoline courts) or EN 1176-1 (playground equipment) govern the equipment in their respective jurisdictions; they do not settle the building’s change of use. Both questions need answers, and mixing their scopes is a common and expensive mistake. Our overview of safety standards for indoor parks covers how the certificates divide.
6.5 Acoustic separation and party operations
What it decides Whether mall management approves the tenant at all. Karts, arcades, and birthday parties generate noise that inline tenants and landlords will hear about.
What to verify Wall and ceiling treatment plans at shared boundaries, and the operator’s party-room placement away from quiet neighbors. Material choices matter here; our notes on materials quality explain what to check beyond color and finish.
6.6 Delivery, installation, and future service access
What it decides Whether large structures can physically reach the floor plate and whether worn parts can be replaced without closing zones.
What to verify Dock access, door widths, and a route from the dock to the far corner of the box. Anchor boxes usually help here, since they were built to receive freight.
When you are ready to price equipment against a real box rather than a template, the sensible next step is a zone-by-zone scope; our indoor playground equipment categories give a starting view of how zones translate into product families.
7. How to Read an Announcement Like This One
Most entertainment backfill announcements follow the same pattern, so it is worth having a fixed way to read them. Three questions separate a project in motion from a project in name only.
Who is the source, and how close to the deal? The St. Cloud story comes from local reporting based on physical signage and a comment attributed to the site contractor. That is one step removed from the operator. It is credible enough to describe intent, but it is not an operator commitment, and WJON’s unsuccessful attempt to reach the company underlines that distance.
What has the operator actually built? The verifiable record here is the Malibu Jack’s website: five listed parks, a flagship with published area and attraction counts. That record supports the operator’s capacity to run a large indoor venue. What it does not confirm is financing or a signed lease for St. Cloud, neither of which is public.
Which filings come next? A project at this scale leaves a paper trail: building permits, change-of-use applications, and eventually hiring. Those are the signals to watch, because they are issued by parties with no incentive to embellish. Until they appear, the honest summary is that St. Cloud has a reported plan, a named operator with relevant experience, and no dates.
8. What This Means for Operators and Landlords
For landlords with a dark or departing anchor, the St. Cloud case adds one more data point to a pattern we have tracked across several markets: large-format entertainment is now a standard candidate for anchor boxes, alongside grocery, fitness, and medical. The pattern does not guarantee a deal. It does mean the landlord’s first question to any entertainment prospect should be about the attraction mix’s structural demands, not just the rent offer.
For operators eyeing a retail box, the announced mix is itself the lesson. A low-ceiling program of karts, lanes, laser tag, and soft play converts a department store with far less structural risk than a jump-heavy program would. If the box has height, that is a different conversation, and the equipment schedule should change with it.
Three things worth doing this week if you are evaluating a similar site:
1. Measure the building before the business plan. Clear height at the lowest obstruction, slab condition, and dock access decide the attraction mix. A 48-hour design and quote cycle only helps when the inputs are real; you can start that process through our design-to-delivery walkthrough.
2. Price the slab work early. Flatness remediation on 100,000 sq ft can reshape a budget faster than any equipment choice. Get the survey before the quotation.
3. Check the change-of-use path with the local authority. The building approval and the equipment certificates are separate questions with separate answers. Sequencing them wrong costs months.
If you are weighing a former retail box for a trampoline park, soft play center, or mixed attraction venue, send us the floor plan and the measured clear height, and we will tell you which attraction classes the building supports.
FAQ
How big is the former Macy’s store at Crossroads Center?
The Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal reported in 2024 that Macy’s occupied about 100,000 sq ft (roughly 9,300 m²) at Crossroads Center. The size of the planned Maui’s Indoor Theme Park inside that box has not been announced, and no floor plan has been published.
When will Maui’s Indoor Theme Park open in St. Cloud?
No opening date has been announced. As of the October 24, 2026 report, the only public evidence is signage at the site, and WJON stated that Jester FEC did not respond to its request for details. Building permits and hiring posts are the next signals to watch.
Who operates Maui’s Indoor Theme Park?
WJON attributed the project to Jester FEC of Lexington, Kentucky, citing the site contractor. The same company operates the Malibu Jack’s chain, whose website lists parks in Kentucky, Indiana, and Texas, with the Lexington flagship spanning 135,000 sq ft and nine indoor attractions. WJON’s list of the chain’s states differs from the website, so the exact footprint is unverified.
Can a trampoline park work in a former department store?
It can, but only when the clear height at the lowest beam, duct, and sprinkler line supports trampoline courts and any raised structures. That single measurement decides more of the plan than budget does. Our 22,000 sq ft layout breakdown shows how the zone plan follows from the building’s dimensions.
What does converting a retail anchor into an entertainment venue cost?
No investment figure has been published for the St. Cloud project, so any number would be guesswork. The cost drivers are slab remediation (critical for bowling), power and ventilation upgrades, change-of-use compliance, and the equipment schedule itself. Our cost-per-square-foot comparison of public fit-out filings shows how widely these projects spread once real numbers exist.
Sources
- WJON News (Paul Habstritt), “Maui’s Indoor Theme Park Coming To St. Cloud’s Crossroads Center”, October 24, 2026 — https://wjon.com/mauis-indoor-theme-park-st-cloud
- Fast Company, “Macy’s store closures 2026: See the full list of doomed locations in 12 states as clearance sales begin”, October 2026 — https://www.fastcompany.com/91471941/macys-stores-closing-in-2026-full-list-of-doomed-locations-states
- Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal, “St. Cloud’s Crossroads Center sells for $80 million”, May 2, 2024 — https://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/news/2024/05/02/st-cloud-crossroads-center-real-estate-sells.html
- Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal, “Receiver appointed to St. Cloud’s Crossroads Center as it faces foreclosure suit”, October 6, 2023 — https://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/news/2023/10/06/receiver-crossroads-center-st-cloud-appointed.html
- Malibu Jack’s official website, Lexington location page (135,000 sq ft, nine attractions, 16 bowling lanes), accessed October 25, 2026 — https://www.malibujacks.net/lexington/
- Malibu Jack’s official website, locations index (Ashland KY, Lafayette IN, Lexington KY, Louisville KY, North Richland Hills TX), accessed October 25, 2026 — https://malibujacks.net/
- Newsweek, “List of Stores Closing This Fall” (Macy’s “A Bold New Chapter”, about 150 closures by end of 2026), October 2026 — https://www.newsweek.com/list-of-stores-closing-this-fall-12513835