All of this Steinbach posting has put me in a New Jersey mood lately. Malls are as synonymous with New Jersey as Bruce Springsteen, so there’s plenty of neat ones to pick from, and the 1.5 million-square-foot Monmouth Mall on the Jersey Shore is one of the cooler ones that I visited for the first time in November of 2006.

The Monmouth Mall is visibly old, and originally began its life as an open air center built on the site of a former farm in 1960. A 1975 expansion brought it to its current, massive size, and renovations in 1987 and 1996 added a food court and movie theatre. Like many old malls, Monmouth Mall has had many anchor stores rotate in and out over the years:

• Abraham & Straus became Stern’s, which in turn became Boscov’s. (You can even see a photo of this store during its Stern’s days here)
• Bamberger’s became Macy’s.
• Alexander’s became Caldor, which in turn became Nobody Beats the Wiz, which then became Burlington Coat Factory. While I have no firsthand experience, the mall directory makes it appear that the Loew’s Cinemas were carved out of this area as well.
• Hahne & Company became Lord & Taylor.
• There’s also a JCPenney. No idea what that might’ve been, if it was ever anything else.

The Vornado Realty Trust-owned center is one of the most successful malls on the Jersey shore today, despite a location that’s relatively close to the Freehold Raceway Mall, one of the state’s largest and newest enclosed shopping malls. I think Monmouth Mall is cool because of its bizarre floorplan and changing decor–if you look at the directory below, you can tell that there is one long wing that begins as a grand, one-level atrium in front of Macy’s before splintering into two levels (much like the Cherry Hill Mall) and continuing a long ways to the modern-day Boscov’s anchor store. In the other direction, at the Macy’s store, the mall takes a 90 degree turn and narrows substantially enroute to the large food court and Burlington Coat Factory store.

And if the floorplan itself doesn’t excite you, then look at the facade of the Macy’s (which is, again, a former Bamberger’s store): check out the wood paneling! It’s pretty vintage and fun.

EDIT 4/29/2007 10:11AM EST: Silly me, I forgot to finish my research when I posted this article. Want to see a vintage advertisement of the Easter Bunny at Monmouth Mall? Because you can.

Outdoor

Macy’s > Food Court wing

Macy’s > Boscov’s wing (2 levels)

Last week, after I got all worked into a lather about that Steinbach photo that was sent to us by Michael Lisicky, he wrote me again, saying “You want Steinbach?” Boy, did he mean it.

He dumped this pile of old Steinbach shots on us, and we couldn’t be happier. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do. Michael guided us through each one:

The vacant downtown Asbury Park store, in 1984. It closed in 1979. The store burned in 1989 and lost its top floor and clock tower.

Steinbach in Red Bank, NJ. This was taken in February 1999 as it was preparing to close. It was 53,000 square feet. It became a Bon-Ton briefly before closing again.

The rear of the Red Bank store. The photo at the top of this post is the sign from the parking lot of this same store.

Steinbach at the Brick Plaza in Brick, NJ. Taken also in 1999. It opened in 1964. The store was the most profitable branch at the end of the chain’s existence and had just received a $1 million makeover.

Inside of the same store in Brick, NJ. This store also became a Bon-Ton and still is today.

This is a nighttime view of the Manalapan Mall location in NJ. In 1996 it became a Value City, along with the stores at the Shore Mall and the now-demolished Seaview Square Mall outside Asbury Park. This picture was taken in January 1995. It was located in a tiny, tiny mall that was active for most of its existence. It was the only anchor.

The last picture is of Michael’s old credit card, and a gift box from Steinbach from the mid-1980’s. At that time all boxes and bags named the store Howland-Steinbach. Howland was a store based out of Bridgeport, CT that was merged into Genung’s out of White Plains, NY. All of the small Steinbach’s in NY, CT and MA were former Howland stores. By the late 1990s all of those stores took on the Steinbach name. Though the store was named Steinbach those familiar with the Asbury Park area stores called them “Stein-BACK’s”. They were quite upper-moderate stores through the 1970s, but dropped off dramatically by the early 1980s. Former Ohrbach’s stores also became Steinbach in NJ and NY. Crowley-Milner from Detroit bought the stores in the mid-1990s but couldn’t keep them going. They all closed in 1999.

Baytown, Texas is a large working-class suburb of about 70,000 people about 20 miles east of Houston.  Baytown’s location on Galveston Bay has positioned it for industrial growth throughout the last few decades, mostly in oil and steel.  Baytown is home to one 1.2 million square foot mall located at I-10 and Garth Road.   

Opened in 1981, San Jacinto Mall is one of two major malls for the area east of Houston, the other being Pasadena Town Square in Pasadena.  Both malls have recently fallen victim to the problems ranging from outdated to competition from other Houston-area malls.  As a result, vacancy rate at San Jacinto Mall has skyrocketed and, despite several plans for renovation, the mall looks today largely as it did when it opened in 1981. 

When it opened, San Jacinto Mall was a modern showplace containing 175 stores and an impressively themed two-level food court and entertainment area in the middle of the mall.  The design of San Jacinto Mall is much like two overlapping “L”, with a square in the middle bounded by some of the anchors and the food court.  In the 1980s, anchor stores included Service Merchandise, Mervyn’s, JCPenney, Sears, Beall’s, Palais Royal, Foley’s, and Montgomery Ward.  Critics balked at such a large center, arguing that Baytown was not large enough to support such a development.  And in the end they were right, but more on that in a bit.   

The decor is what makes San Jacinto Mall an incredible relic.  In today’s modern retailing world, shiny marble-like tiles, whitewashed walls, and frequent kiosks complement bright lights, soft edges and pewter fixtures, while sections of comfy chairs and area rugs are surrounded by unassuming planters.  This is a stark contrast to mall decor of the 1970s and early 1980s, where earthen tones, woods, dark tiles, fountains and trees helped to create an artificial ’inside’ world to woo shoppers away from the actual outside world of the downtowns the malls helped replace.  In creating the inside mall space to mirror nature and the outside world, developers sought to give shoppers a similar, yet fake, environment for their escapist activities.  They don’t do this today, giving shoppers a pristine environment to escape into the hedonistic world of shopping, actually favoring a balance toward capitalism instead of aesthetics in giving up the fountains and trees to provide kiosks in order to maximize profit. 

I view this shift as mostly negative.  Early mall developers such as Victor Gruen sought to provide awe-inspiring enclosed environments for the activity of shopping, giving rise to amazingly complex worlds complete with spectacular fountains, conversation pits, sculpture gardens, center stages, and even bird cages.  These older centers provided more than a vapid utility, they were community-building places, significant in their own rite as more than just places to go and spend a buck.  Sure, that was the reason you were there, but they felt less soulless.  San Jacinto Mall has received little more than a few coats of paint during the past quarter century, and the decor is like stepping into a time machine back to this era.  The wooden facades of the former Service Merchandise and former Walgreens complement the dark floors and instead of a few small ceramic planters, there are entire garden areas, some with full-sized trees.  The high ceilings have a row of giant windows on one side, allowing a constant flow of natural light into the enclosed space, while the other side is curiously flanked with a continuous, arched mural of the daytime sky.  Along the sky mural are humorous curiosities painted in, such as puffy clouds, jets with long contrails and even a roving gang of UFO ships, Space Invaders style.  Mirrors and fountains are also not in short supply here.   

Speaking of Atari, the food court and entertainment area near the middle of the mall is also worth noting.  Between the first and second levels here, the ceiling has an early-80s latticework design made with slender metal beams, and the food court’s sign looks like it belongs on the cover for an early 80s video game.  This area is the only two-level area of the mall outside the anchor stores, and the entertainment area on top features a full-sized carousel, playground and a few benches but oddly little else occupies the second level.

Today, San Jacinto Mall is like several malls in the Houston area with an abundance of stores near the central pivot points of the mall and a contrast of abandonment on the far wings.  Anchor woes came in 2001 as Montgomery Ward and Service Merchandise closed amid the shutting of those chains; Bealls also closed the same year.  In 2006, Mervyns departed the mall as they left the Houston area entirely.  So, as you can see, the loss of anchors is mostly not the mall’s fault, but the loss of indoor stores is.  Baytown is not large enough to support this development, and articles we’ve found suggest Baytowners (Baytownies? Whatever.) shop at the more successful Houston-area malls like the Galleria and even clear across the metro area 50 miles away at Katy Mills.  The mall today houses about 60 stores, and a popular cinema.  At only one-third capacity, many of these stores are near the middle of the mall, and several wings are almost completely dead.  Most notably, the Mervyn’s/Service Merchandise corridor and the Macy’s/Palais Royal corridor are faltering.

As a result of these problems, you can bet changes are in the works for San Jacinto Mall.  The former Montgomery Ward wing, which was possibly the worst-off for the longest time, has now been closed and will soon be demolished.  In its place, a “lifestyle” wing will be built, with little details released yet.  If it doesn’t pump some vigor back into the mall, you can surely bet that large portions if not entire mall will be abandoned in few more years. 

Our exclusive pictures of San Jacinto Mall were taken in April 2007.  Add some of your own stories or comments about this truly interesting relic. 

Food court area:

Outdoor shots:

More indoor shots:

Michael, one of our readers, sent us some historic 1986 and 1994 photos of the soon-to-be-demolished Shore Mall in Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey, just outside of Atlantic City, (as well as two shots of the now-horrifying River Roads Mall in Jennings, MO). All three shots are pretty cool, but I’m especially excited about the unearthing of the photo above–a shot of the departed Asbury Park-based department store chain Steinbach, memories of which seem to have disappeared almost completely right along with the chain in 1999. I never even got to go inside of one of these, but I remember they had some very mysterious New England locations (like Concord, NH, South Burlington, VT and Waterford, CT) that mystefied me even then.

This actually is a good time to share a photo set that I took of the former Steinbach store in Waterford, CT, just over the border from neighboring New London on US1. These shots were taken in early March 2007, and are of the former “Waterfall Place,” a very strange old strip mall-enclosed mall hybrid that once hosted Steinbach as its main anchor, along with a very small enclosed mall on its second level. Today, the long-vacant Steinbach has been redeveloped with a Sav-A-Lot food store on the first level and a Planet Fitness on the second floor, although its plaza is as curious as ever despite attempts to renovate. The second level of the Steinbach building, which once housed a small enclosed mall connecting from the strip mall, over the Steinbach store, and then down a set of stairs into the back/side entrance of Steinbach, has been cleaned up and reopened to the public, so today it’s possible to get inside and witness a truly strange piece of retail. It also sports a location of Rhode Island-based Benny’s Home & Auto Stores, whose survival continues to beat the odds, and which we wrote about last August. Check it out:

Inside the second level:

Just a few miles south of Pharr and McAllen lies the large Mexican city of Reynosa.  At well over 500,000 residents, Reynosa eclipses McAllen’s population by about threefold.  Many people are most familiar with Reynosa and the Mexican cities along the Rio Grande for infamous reasons: rampant crime, poverty, and maquiladoras.  However, upon my visit, I noted that although conditions were noticably better on the American side, the criticisms of these cities are largely an overreaction promulgated by the American media.  While, like many cities in any country, there were sufficiently visible examples of abject poverty, so too were there modern areas of the city with very typical, American-style conveniences including new subdivisions, convenience stores, big box, and even shopping malls.  In general, the disparity between life in Mexico and life in the U.S., while noticeable, is not as significant as you probably think. 

Since retail is our focus here, we’ll take a look at what Reynosa has to offer and consider comparisons to what we’re familiar with on the American side.  In doing this, we hope to provide a brief glimpse into the parallel otherworld of Mexican retailing.  Much like we’ve found with Canada, they have their own, unique chains and ways of doing things and it’s worth a shot to try and understand.  However, several caveats: we’ve only been to Mexican border cities, and are aware that the interior is probably much different in terms of general conditions and offerings.  Also, we don’t speak spanish (well, maybe un poco) so much of what we observed may very well have been lost in translation.  That said, we’ll try to explain what we found, and add a new country to our mix in the process.  Diversity is cool, after all.

Plaza Periférico is a very new, very modern enclosed mall on the far west side of Reynosa along the heavily-travelled main route to Monterrey.  This route is also the major modern retail strip for Reynosa, and is full of fast food, big box, strip malls, and American-style chain restaurants.  Home Depot, Sam’s Club, Office Depot, McDonald’s, Chili’s, Popeye’s, and HEB are all American stores with presence here.  In addition to those are Mexican box chains and restaurants with which we are unfamiliar, including Sanborn’s department store, City Club warehouse store, S-Mart Grocery, Coppel Hidalgo, and impressively modern hypermarket Soriana.  In addition, there’s even a new American-style brew pub called Sierra Madre Brewing Company. There are no less than three enclosed malls along or within a very close distance of this strip. 

We’re starting with Plaza Periférico, which is at the west end of the aforementioned strip near the intersection of México Route 40 and México Route 2.   Consulting Wikimapia, which proved as an invaluable resource for this non-spanish speaker in finding the retail strips in Mexico, Plaza Periférico was labelled yet not present in the satellite photo.  So, we’re assuming it’s less than a few years old.  Anchored by Soriana, Famsa (appliances), Cinépolis (a large multi-screen movie theatre), Woolworths (yes, that very same one), and a large food court, Plaza Periferico is your typical suburban mall.  Most of the stores inside are Mexican chains we’re assuming, but many tenets of a typical American mall remain.  For example, there are cars for sale parked inside, and the same kiosks were used to hock the same stuff: cable television, cell phones, and printer ink.  

However, at the same time, there are differences too.  In the parking lot, parking attendants rush over to you when you get into your car to assist you out of your parking spot.  You back out, and they blow a whistle when it’s clear to proceed forward.  Kind of interesting, yet I wonder why it’s necessary.  To create jobs?  The parking lots were no different or hazardous than those in the U.S.  Perhaps they double as security for the lot because of more frequent thefts, and the parking assistance is just part of their job as well.  The decor is pretty standard for a new mall, but the layout is a bit different.  There are two large, circular courts at each end of the mall, and the anchors are sort of placed haphazardly throughout, yet the organization is efficient. 

Take a look at the pictures of Plaza Periférico and the surrounding area, taken April 2007.  Since, again, we aren’t very familiar with the spanish language, finding even internet resources about this mall didn’t produce much.  So, we once again open it up to you, our readers, to fill in some of the details about this mall and the area in general.