Toys“R”Us is coming back to St. Clairsville. A new store is set to open at Ohio Valley Mall in October, occupying about 2,000 square feet at the mall's center court, though an exact opening date has not yet been announced.
The new location will be operated by Go Retail Group and will offer an assortment of popular toys and brands, according to WTOV. Mall marketing director Candi Noble-Greathouse confirmed the concept is straightforward: “this is a toy store.” Reporter Jaime Baker, who covered the announcement, said the store will provide a toy-store experience in the mall.
The store also fits a broader effort to revive the brand through partnerships rather than reopen the former chain’s old locations. WHP Global owns the Toys“R”Us brand, and its retail partner Go! Retail Group is part of a nationwide expansion plan calling for 120 new standalone U.S. stores this holiday season, alongside the brand’s existing shops inside Macy’s. The St. Clairsville opening comes as Toys“R”Us pushes beyond the department-store format it used for much of its U.S. comeback.
A Familiar Name Fills an Old Void
The return carries some weight for longtime shoppers in the region. Ohio Valley Mall lost its previous Toys 'R' Us location in 2018 after the national chain filed for bankruptcy and liquidated its stores, a loss noted at the time by theintelligencer.net during coverage of the mall's 40th anniversary. Mall officials expect the reopening to bring more than just merchandise back to the center court — they anticipate it will stir a sense of sentimentality for shoppers who grew up visiting the original store.
The chain’s 2018 disappearance followed a court-supervised wind-down. Toys“R”Us and affiliated companies filed for Chapter 11 protection on September 18, 2017; the debtors sought approval to wind down U.S. operations in March 2018, and the court approved the motion on March 20, with certain exceptions. The current store carries the familiar trademark, but operates under a later retail arrangement: Go! Retail Group says its Toys“R”Us locations operate under license.
Ohio Valley Mall itself has deep roots in the region. The 1.5-million-square-foot retail center, owned by the Cafaro Co., opened its doors in 1978 and has served residents across Eastern Ohio and West Virginia's Northern Panhandle for decades, per theintelligencer.net's earlier reporting. Losing an anchor-level draw like Toys 'R' Us in 2018 was one of several blows the mall weathered as national retail chains restructured.
The brand had already returned to U.S. stores in a smaller format before this new standalone-store push. Macy’s rolled Toys“R”Us shops out to all its stores in 2022; the locations started at 1,000 square feet, and Macy’s said its first-quarter 2022 toy sales were 15 times higher than in the comparable period before the partnership. The department-store rollout provides a recent example of the brand returning through compact retail spaces as well as larger stores.
What Shoppers Still Don't Know
Plenty of details remain unconfirmed. No official opening date has been set beyond the general October 2026 timeframe, and it's not yet clear which specific toy brands or product lines will line the shelves when the doors finally open. For now, families in Belmont County are left watching the center court for signs of construction and, eventually, that familiar red-and-blue signage returning to St. Clairsville.
