GALESBURG — At 1:28 p.m. Friday, the doors to the Sandburg Mall were locked for the foreseeable future.

A handful of employees were left as GNC finished emptying its store, the last tenant to leave the mall. Outside of GNC on the store front, very few markers remained of what was the last interior store at 1150 W. Carl Sandburg Drive.

Karmark Tire and Automotive, which leases its spot off the former J.C. Penney anchor building, remains the last business operating on the 50-some acres which used to be an economic hub.

In the last minutes of the mall's doors being open following GNC's departure, a buzz from lights was one of the only sounds in a half-lit corridor that once bustled with shoppers and walkers. Mall workers traded stories of memories of different stores that used to occupy the Sandburg Mall, exuding the aura of a wake or visitation.

Slowly, the lights were turned off on bare shelves and a stack of unused boxes inside GNC. Then came the final set of lights in the former Sears anchor corridor. The halls in the mall were left dark, with soft natural light flowing in from outside doors on a overcast, chilly Friday afternoon.

A few items were brought inside the mall before the final key-turn locked the building. With that, the few people left tried to set up plans to stay in touch even while noting the mall was more than 90 percent full just a few years ago.

The electricity is set to be turned off in the coming days. What will become of the mall property has not been known for some time.

GNC is just the final store departure after businesses began to depart following the then-new mall ownership's November 2016 announcement that the heart of the mall would be torn down to make way for a mixed-use development with the anchor buildings intact.

That plan was then tabled in January 2017, but that didn't stop the exodus of mall tenants.

During the course of 2017, most of the stores vacated the heart of the mall. Some closed for good. Some left the Galesburg market. Some relocated to new spaces in Galesburg.

In recent months, the final two mall anchors — J.C. Penney and Bergner's — closed up shop. In-between those closures, a temporary wall was erected to restrict traffic to the Sears corridor and mall walking ended.

While mall ownership was able to successfully get the mall divided up on paper, nothing else has been made official about what could happen at the site.

GNC, which was in the process of filling its new shelves, is now open for business at Seminary Square, nestled between Great Clips and Sun Loan in the strip mall that sits behind Buffalo Wild Wings in the North Seminary Street business development.

Robert Connelly: (309) 343-7181, ext. 266; rconnelly@register-mail.com; @RConnelly_