It was the fall of 2004, and I was finishing up my first day of what was then the longest trip that I’d taken alone. After a long day spent trawling across the northeast, I found myself standing in the lobby of a Red Roof Inn in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, entirely by myself in a city that I knew nothing about beyond that it was a) the capital city of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and b) home of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant.

I knew full well that I’d spend the entire evening doing what I’d done all day–exploring the city and visiting malls–but something was strangely freeing about arriving in this strange city without a plan. My first stop was the Harrisburg Mall, just about a mile from my hotel.

At the time, I was going to seek out a place named the Harrisburg EAST Mall, but apparently the mall was in the middle of a major rebranding and renovation, and I stumbled into the center of it. Apparently the Harrisburg Mall (no “East” anymore), which is the largest enclosed shopping mall in metropolitan Harrisburg, hit some rocky times in the early ’00s. Anchored by Hecht’s, JCPenney, and Lord & Taylor until 2003 or so (though I think the Lord & Taylor may have once been a Hess’s), L&T pulled out of the mall as part of a larger round of closings. JCPenney and Hecht’s both announced their intention to leave soon after. The mall was sold, and management had to do something quickly to turn around the fortunes of the rapidly-emptying mall. Despite that the Harrisburg East Mall had been the area’s dominant mall quite recently, it seemed headed for a fast crash.

Thankfully, Lubert-Adler and Feldman Equities took a proactive approach to protecting the mall, which they detail in this case study. They renovated the two-level, 840,000 square-foot, 90-store center inside and out, introducing a rather Pottery Barn-esque design scheme, and convinced Hecht’s to stay on the property. The JCPenney space was quickly filled with a Boscov’s store, and the former Lord & Taylor was dramatically reworked to become a Bass Pro Shops, which today drives a large amount of traffic to the mall. In addition, a final phase of the mall’s renovation calls for the construction of a lifestyle-center-style streetscape to be built onto the front of the structure, creating space for additional outdoor retail. A movie theatre is also scheduled to be added to the rear of the mall, between Hecht’s and Boscov’s and presumably off of the food court wing.
When I visited in 2004, the mall had a surprising number of vacancies and Bass Pro Shops had not yet opened for business. As of a month ago, when I swung by again, the mall had rebounded dramatically and now boasts an 80% occupancy rate and seems to have reclaimed its role as the dominant mall for the Harrisburg area.

As you see from these pictures, Harrisburg Mall isn’t terribly exciting, bar its tall pylon or unrenovated basement court (the final picture). But it is an example of a mall that was quickly and strategically pulled out of an undeserved rapid nosedive and has been brought back to profitability. I wish all mall management companies were this stealthy.

For a vintage view, check out this 1988 shot of the mall’s parking lot! For a modern aerial view, check out this really neat-o black and white photo that shows the mall today, with the Harrisburg skyline in the background.

This is my sole photo from the 2004 trip. The fuzziness is arr-tistic, not simply a result of my old VGA-res style camera phone:

And here’s some that are a bit more current, all taken July 2006:

All too often we profile the underdogs here. Malls that couldn’t make it get all the attention and some of the interesting, successful centers get lost in the fray. Sure, empty, dated corridors are great, but we aren’t being fair here and we never intended to punish those who are currently winning the game of capitalism. Besides, they’ll all eventually be history anyway, right?

Today’s entry comes to us from the Tri-Cities region of Tennessee and Virginia. With a population of nearly 500,000, the region is anchored by three cities: Kingsport, Bristol, and Johnson City. All three cities are in the northeast corner of Tennessee; however, Bristol is interestingly in both Tennessee and Virginia. Fort Henry Mall is located in Kingsport, which has a population of about 45,000. It is a successful two-level mall located on a prosperous strip and is nearly at capacity with stores. It’s currently anchored by JCPenney, Belk (2 locations) and Sears. One of the Belk locations was originally a Miller’s, a Hess’s, and most recently a Proffitt’s, which changed to Belk due to a buyout in March 2006.

Both the outside and inside of the mall are currently a hybrid of both very dated and modern decor, which unfortunately seem to be fighting and that’s not good. Outside, the anchors and most of the mall facade look ancient, which I think is cool but I’m sure puts off a few shoppers here and there. You know the type, they don’t walk into a place unless it’s glassy, shiny and sterile looking as a hospital. It appears, though, that Sears did update their logo with their very new logo. Going inside, the floors were dominated by pink tiles with purple borders, carpeting with a kaleidoscope of colors (none of which really matched), and peach colored railings. The ceiling was this mesh-looking latticework design, and sodium lamps hung down from it to light the mall (aided, thankfully, with some natural lighting and lighting from the stores). All in all, the design scheme inside the mall seemed somewhat schizophrenic and didn’t work at all for me. Maybe it works for you. For another strange color scheme, see my earlier Pekin Mall entry.

As for the mall this one destroyed, it was called Kingsport Mall, and was recently anchored by Montgomery Ward, Heilig Meyers, and Hills (later Ames). Talk about a sad destiny. All of those anchors went completely bankrupt and closed all stores in either 2001 or 2002. Needless to say, the Kingsport Mall, which never seemed to be on par with Fort Henry Mall in the first place, went down the tubes. In 2003 it was demolished and redeveloped into East Stone Commons, a very successful strip mall anchored by big box like Office Depot, PetsMart, Ross, Hobby Lobby, and Goody’s Family Clothing. It also has Cold Stone Creamery, which means it’s busy night and day. A tongue in cheek take on Kingsport featuring some of former Kingsport Mall’s pictures is featured here. Otherwise, check out my pictures of Fort Henry Mall featured below. They were taken August 2005.

Since this blog is sub-titled retail history, I figured that our inaugural mall from the Granite State might as well be, um, history.

The Nashua Mall was the first enclosed shopping mall built in New Hampshire, opening in 1969. The 350,000 square foot, 35-ish store, simply laid-out dumbell mall served for many years as the sole enclosed mall serving the city of Nashua, which sits on the Massachusetts state line. Originally, the mall itself hosted Woolco and Almy’s as anchor stores, and the sprawling outlots included a Montgomey Ward, a large plaza with (I think) a supermarket, Child World, and–probably built sometime later–a Shop ‘N Save/Hannaford supermarket.

There were some expected shifts, with the roster of anchors you see above: mainly that the Woolco became a Bradlees in the mid-1980s, Almy’s became a Burlington Coat Factory in the late 1980s, and the Montgomery Ward (which closed in 1997) became an Ames before that store also closed in 2002.

The Nashua Mall’s downfall was twofold:

• It looked extremely old, because it clearly never received a significant face-lift during its entire lifetime. I wish I’d had the foresight to snap some pictures before it was too late, because the Nashua Mall was truly a gem. Despite that it was one straight-shot hallway, it was wide and with high ceilings, decorated with diagonal wood paneling and extremely groovy, dangling 1960s vintage light fixtures. The high ceilings employed an old Frank Lloyd Wright architectural trick (though I seriously doubt it was intentional) wherein there were dramatic changes in the ceiling elevation, causing some “low” areas broken by very “high” areas. Wright built this into many of his structures to cause people to move throughout the building, because lower ceilings in hallways and foyers encouraged people to move towards the more open central areas. Oh, there was also a beat up penny fountain in the center court, and Bradlees had a massive wall clock at the front of their store.
• A change in demographics in the Nashua area. Unlike most malls that die, Nashua’s demographics improved as the city experienced a major development boom throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Included in this boom was the new Pheasant Lane Mall, a large two level mall constructed on Daniel Webster Highway on the state line on Nashua’s extreme south side. Because the New Hampshire border towns are a popular place to shop for Massachusetts residents due to the lack of sales tax, this mall would become widely popular and steal much of the business away from the Nashua Mall on the city’s northwest side. Similarly, the sprawling northwestern corner of Nashua also developed its own major commercial strip, but it was all located one exit to the north along route 101a, away from the Nashua Mall. With a population of 85,000 proper and many dense suburbs located nearby, Nashua could’ve easily continued to support two malls, but the Nashua Mall never received the necessary cosmetic love to make it viable.

Strangely, despite the mall’s horrendous condition, it soldiered on quite well until its death in the early 2000s and even included some mid-market tenants such as Brookstone and Cherry & Webb. The first major blow was when Bradlees closed with the entire chain in early 2001, leaving Burlington Coat Factory as the lone anchor. Kohl’s announced they would be taking the space, but they demolished the Bradlees building and built their own structure that was freestanding yet on roughly the same footprint. Not long after, the half of the mall closest to Burlington Coat Factory was shuttered and dramatically reworked to host a Christmas Tree Shop, which did also not have access to the mall. This left a small area of the original unrenovated enclosed mall for a couple of years. DeadMalls has some photos of it in this state.

This final portion of the mall would close in early 2004. The last of the mall was bigboxed, and the center today hosts Kohl’s, Christmas Tree Shops, Burlington Coat Factory, LL Bean, Home Depot, and Starbucks amongst its anchor stores. If you happen to be in the area, make sure to take note of the Burlington Coat Factory store, which is the last vestige of the original mall–the building is even still in the old Almy’s style!

Our friends over at From Woolworth to Wal-Mart have an even more complete history of the Nashua Mall, including a few more precise details than I’ve included here and some illustrative graphics to show how the mall used to look. The only truly original visual I have to offer up is the mall’s logo above–I scanned that off of a promotional flyer given out at the mall in 2000 or 2001. Despite the way it looks, it isn’t really *that* old!
Want to see something really strange? I’m not sure how long it will last, but if you load the Ask.com map page and zoom in and out intermittently, you can see the footprint of the mall before and after its conversion to a strip center!

I didn’t want Canada to feel left out, since they seem to actually have more malls than the United States (per capita anyway).  Hey, it’s colder there.  Anyway, Garden City Shopping Centre is an enclosed mall with 80 stores located on the northwest side of Winnipeg, Manitoba.  It is approximately 30 years old, and anchored by major stores Sears, Canadian Tire, Winners, Petcetera, and Shoppers Drug Mart.  It’s perfectly successful, and your average suburban mall in every way with one notable difference.  It’s in Canada.  Therefore, it’s automatically fascinating to a Yankee (like me) with an interest in chains, malls, and retail in general. 

In order to begin comprehending how malls seem to work in Canada (and they do work differently), I’ll provide a very short primer here.  While the enclosed mall is essentially the exact same thing that we have in the States (but with different stores, of course), Canadians seem to construct them more often.  That is to say, their mall-per-capita ratio is higher than ours.  What in the States would be a strip mall anchored by grocery, discount, or other, is often in Canada a fully enclosed mall.  Sure, they have plenty of strip malls and even the latent big-box anchored behemoths (they often call them Power Centres), but they certainly have a lot of enclosed malls aimed at serving only a neighborhood contingent.  Here in the States, most of our enclosed malls (with exceptions, of course) cater to at very least a regional, if not super-regional consumer base.  In the States, it would be more odd to find an enclosed mall anchored by a grocery store or discount store and nothing else, whereas in Canada, it’s quite commonplace.  That said, there seem to be a lot more enclosed malls in Canada per city or metro area because there actually are. 

Winnipeg is no exception to this rule of thumb.  There are no less than 10 enclosed malls of significant size within Winnipeg, which has a metro population of approximately 700,000.  Compare that to similarly sized (or larger) metropolitan areas in the United States and you will mostly come up short.  That’s just one of the reasons Canada is fascinating to me.  I also enjoy it because it’s like an alternate reality or paradigm shift to the United States.  Essentially things are done the same and the same types of things are available, with quirky differences to make it interesting.  In retail this is exemplified in the fact that their chains are similar to ours, but not the same.  They have chains of their own mall stores that are in every mall there, just like we do.  But they’re different.  It’s great.

I took these pictures in July 2001.  If someone’s acutally reading this from Winnipeg, please comment away.  I’ve never met any Canadians interested in malls and retailing in general, and it would be a great perspective from the other point of view.   

Built in 1964, South Forks Plaza was Grand Forks, North Dakota’s first enclosed mall on a main commercial strip close to the center of town.  In 1978, the Dayton Hudson Corporation opened a new mall, Columbia Mall, on the edge of town near the recently completed Interstate 29, linking Grand Forks north to Winnipeg, Canada and south to the rest of the United States.  Quickly, Columbia Mall replaced South Forks Plaza as the destination for serious shoppers and the place for regional and national chain “mall stores”.  

Since Columbia Mall took over, Grand Forks Plaza has been relegated to featuring mostly local stores and service establishments, drawing from a very local crowd.  Its days of a regional or super-regional center have been over for a long time.  Then, in 2001, another blow to the mall’s presence hit as Grand Forks Marketplace, a big box anchored strip mall, opened.  It is anchored by SuperTarget, Best Buy, Lowe’s, Old Navy, Michaels, Bed Bath & Beyond, Gordman’s; Kohl’s and Menard’s are across the street. 

In the early 2000s, South Forks Plaza’s owner, J Herzog and Sons of Denver, renamed the mall to Grand Cities Mall after the Grand Cities region of Grand Forks, East Grand Forks, MN, and other surrounding communities making up the immediate area.  They hoped this rebranding would help the mall reposition itself as a retail destination for the micropolitan area despite the assault of Columbia Mall and Grand Forks Marketplace.  Grand Cities Mall/South Forks Plaza has been anchored by K-Mart for years and it is the largest anchor at almost 100,000 square feet.  The other anchor, Big Lots, flanks the other end of the mall, and a mix of mostly local but some national chain stores make up the mix of stores in Grand Cities Mall.  It is worth noting that much of the space in the mall is taken by services such as a Karate studio, Century 21 Real Estate, a travel agent, a shoe shop, and even a ballet studio. 

So why can’t the mall make it?  Simply put, the demographics of Grand Forks and the immediate area cannot support two malls and a giant big box center.  Grand Forks has a population of 50,000; however, J Herzog indicates the immediate area has 100,000 residents and the Grand Cities Mall has a potential to draw from a trade area of 300,000.  Frankly, I’m not entirely sure where they get that number, as the population density in this largely agricultural area is very low.  The nearest other cities of any significance are Fargo, which is 1 hour south, and Winnipeg, which is just over 2 hours north in Canuckistan.  Grand Forks is the commercial center for the entire area in between Fargo and the Canadian border, but they’re clearly shopping at Columbia Mall and Grand Forks Marketplace, and not Grand Cities Mall.

I stepped into a time machine and entered South Forks Plaza in July 2001 and took these pictures.  I was mostly fascinated and very truly amazed at how dated this mall was.  It had clearly not been renovated in much capacity since opening in the mid 1960s.  Many of the (dead) storefronts sported this western-themed, wooden facade which was complemented with bricks, and must have been popular then.  Some of the light fixtures, flooring, and existing signage were also clearly original to the mall, which was amazing.  Other parts of the indoor portion of the mall appeared to be under construction, and the developer’s website indicate a “renovation” of sorts took place in 2001.  So, I’m not actually sure what the mall looks like today; however, it appears to still be open for business.  Hopefully someone with some more knowledge of the area can enlighten us on the mall’s history and what it’s like today, 5 years after these pictures were taken.