JCPenney will shutter its Franklin, Tennessee mall anchor in fall 2026 so Dick’s can install a House of Sport with golf simulators, and local shoppers will feel the loss.
The U.S. Sun reports that the JCPenney anchor at CoolSprings Galleria will permanently close in the fall of 2026 after the chain declined to renew its lease.
Final sales are already underway. Signs outside the store have alerted shoppers to the coming shutdown, and discounts of up to 50 percent are available on select merchandise.
CBL Properties, the firm that manages CoolSprings Galleria, confirmed Dick’s House of Sport will take the space. The format is a sister concept to Dick’s Sporting Goods and has been tested as an experimental retail model since 2021.
The mall itself opened in 1991. JCPenney arrived a few years later and has been a fixture for shoppers across more than three decades of ordinary errands, school clothes, and weekend trips.
One shopper who saw the closing signs left a blunt Yelp review about what the exit means in practice.
The unnamed reviewer wrote:
“I’m very sad to see this store go, but arriving at this location last night, I saw that this location is indeed closing.”
The same shopper added:
“Now, it will be close to an hour drive in one of two directions to find the nearest JCPenney.”
That is the concrete cost. A department store that sat inside a major Franklin mall becomes a special trip. Families who used the anchor for basics lose the convenience first; the replacement arrives later as a different kind of store.
No specific day has been set for the final lock on the doors, only the fall 2026 window tied to the lease expiration. CoolSprings Galleria was reached for comment; no detailed public reply is on record in the available reporting.
What is clear is the handoff. JCPenney will not stay. Dick’s House of Sport will occupy the box. The older model, broad apparel, home goods, and one-stop department-store shopping, gives way to a sporting-goods concept built around activity and specialty gear, including the golf-simulator draw highlighted in coverage of the swap.
Mall owners have chased that shift for years. Traditional anchors shrink or leave. Operators fill the square footage with formats they hope will pull traffic for entertainment as much as for necessities. Shoppers who still want a straightforward JCPenney are the ones left recalculating drive times.
Franklin’s CoolSprings Galleria kept this particular anchor through the rise of online retail and through every cycle of mall reinvention since the early 1990s. The lease end in 2026 closes that chapter. The space will not sit empty if the Dick’s plan holds; it will simply serve a different customer mission.
Closing-sale discounts may soften the goodbye for bargain hunters in the near term. They do not replace a permanent store inside a mall that has defined local shopping for a generation of Tennessee residents.
When practical retail exits and spectacle retail moves in, working families pay in miles and time, while the mall chases the next experience.