The Nittany Mall was developed by Crown American and officially opened in January 1968. The mall originally had just two anchors, Grants and Penn Traffic, and approximately 30 smaller stores. Its first expansion in 1970 included the addition of a Sears store, which was relocated from downtown State College, and over a dozen other smaller stores. The new Sears included 45 merchandise departments and a 10-bay automotive center. After the closing of the Grants chain in 1976, Gee Bee took over the space. Penn Traffic, one of the mall's original anchors, was sold to developer and Hess'sdepartment store chain owner Crown American in 1982 who rebranded the stores as Hess's. The expansion and renovation of the Nittany Mall in 1989-1990 included the addition of a fourth anchor, JCPenney. Also at this time, the Sears store was expanded and relocated to a new east section of the mall while the Sears automotive center was moved to a separate location in the mall and eventually moved again to a new standalone building on the property. In 1992, Gee Bee was converted to Value City after that company acquired the Gee Bee stores chain. Hess's continued to operate at the mall until 1994 when it was sold to Bon-Ton Stores. Value City operated until 1997 when it was closed and razed to make room for a new Kaufmann'sdepartment store. The May Department Stores Company, which owned Kaufmann's, was sold to Federated Department Stores in 2005. Federated proceeded to convert various May properties to Macy's, including the Nittany Mall store, in 2006. The JCPenney store remained at the mall until 2015 when JCPenney announced plans to close 39 of its stores in the United States that year. The JCPenney store was replaced by a Dunham's Sports, one of the nation's largest sporting goods chains, in 2016. In November 2017, Sears announced it would be closing 63 more of its stores including the Nittany Mall location. The Sears store closed inJanuary 2018 but the automotive center remains open. In April 2018, it was announced that the entire Bon-Ton stores chain would be closing as the company failed to find a suitable buyer. The Sears and Bon-Ton closures left the mall with just two anchors for the first time since 1970. It was announced in September 2019 that the Illinois-based Rural King department store chain would be opening a store in the mall by the spring of 2020 which would occupy the former Sears space. On January 6, 2020, it was announced that the Macy's store would be closing in March 2020.
