Aviation Mall; Queensbury (Glens Falls), New York
The city of Glens Falls, New York is only arguably within the Capital Region metropolitan area at all, given that its 40 minutes or so to the north of Albany. However, something about the entire area has always felt contiguous to me, which is why I included the Aviation Mall within the Albany malls case study a few weeks back.
The Aviation Mall is the lone mall serving the Glens Falls-Lake George area. The mid-sized metropolitan area is somewhat unique, in that it includes a traditional, older northern industrial city (Glens Falls) as well as a large tourist area (Lake George, which also serves as the gateway to the Adirondack Mountains) and is located on the same commercial strip as some major tourist attractions (Six Flags is just a few miles away). Developed by the Pyramid Cos. in 1976, the mid-sized mall is relatively standard for what Pyramid was setting forth at the time: straight-forward, linear one-level malls with a slight bend in the middle, giving them a subtle “V” shape. Nothing about the decor is terribly exciting, and the 50-store mall is basically what you’d expect to find in a smaller, more isolated metropolitan area. The current anchors are Sears, JCPenney, The Bon-Ton, Target, and Dick’s Sporting Goods.
A few interesting facts:
- In the mid-1990s, JCPenney decided to expand into a larger store than what they’d been occupying, which was originally a Denby’s location. They built a new store on the outside of their original store, and turned the old store into new mall space (and today, part of this space is occupied by Dick’s Sporting Goods). Most of the former JCPenney/Denby’s that was turned into mall space has not done well, for the most part, and despite being the newest and cleanest part of the mall also seems to host most of its vacancy.
- The Target store was added in 2004, and did not replace an existing anchor.
- In 1998, Pyramid unveiled a plan to expand Aviation Mall to bring its size to be comparable with Albany’s Crossgates Mall (which is a whopping 1.7 million square feet). Pyramid even went so far as to buy some adjacent properties to accommodate the expansion, but ultimately abandoned much of the project.
- The Bon Ton occupies a space occupied from the early ’80s to 1999 by Caldor. The court in front of The Bon Ton, which is set off to the side of the main mallway, has not been renovated, and is a massive treat (and truly, the only reason to make a special trek to see this mall):
You can also check out a picture of the court back in its Caldor days at DeadMalls. You may notice that this particular Caldor appears to have never received the jazzy, red ’90s vintage logo, and lived out its days with the blocky, orange logo instead.
XISMZERO
March 9th, 2007 at 5:27 am
Most intruging update lately! This Aviation Mall is a real gem… and you were damn right about that “jungle” outside Bon-Ton. It would almost be worth the multi-hour drive to go see it. I would go too nuts with photos and I’ve heard mixed reports about Pyramid’s typical mall security. Is that why the photos are a little scant (except for you hiding in the former Caldor foliage)?
For such an outdated mall, that’s gotta be the first Sears with the lowercase up-to-date company signage. Heck, I’ve seen brand new or newly renovated centers with older Sears stores than that.
Another interesting anchor is Target; they seem be without a a central mall entrance from the insides. Actually they appear to have “leaky” entrances (more than one?) inside the mall. I suppose that ill-adaption is leftover from an aborted project or one that may never see the light beyond all this brown.
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XISMZERO
March 9th, 2007 at 5:48 am
Don’t mean to clog this topic with my posts but I’ve noticed many changes from that center court circa Caldor and now. They appear to have changed much; the globe lights are singular instead of quads, bulbs are solid, flooring is white (carpet?), paint job and most of all, they appear to have white bunkered the once skylight-peaking ceilings! Funny thing about it, it seems they’ve managed to brighten up this area much more so than it was when it had natural lighting! That’s what we call an aborted sterlization today…
That exterior is not typical of Caldor stores I’ve seen. It’s a shame you couldn’t secure a daytime shot of it for label scar purposes. Bon-Ton is well known over at Newburgh Mall (NY) for neglecting to paint over a rainbow-era scar on their exterior. It also appears WikiPedia’s unknown author claims Caldor shuttered in 1998, a year before the chain folded.
Another few questions, how did *this* Sears get lucky enough to renovate?
And how did JCPenney built a store that isn’t stuck in a 70s/80s black hole? This one actually agrees with the times?!
This is like an alternate, fantasy mall featuring “anchors that won”! Or maybe these anchors were led into a “Pyramid scheme”. What a scam.
(Sorry for rambling on!)
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Allan
March 9th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
I personally think it’s interesting too(considering the size of this market, which though I dunno much about Glen Falls, probably is a typical small to mid-size market that this mall serves), that Sears chose to update their signage here(as opposed to possibly doing so in a bigger market, i.e. Syracuse, etc.).
Wow, what I’d kill to successfully find(and possibly sneakily photograph, hehehe….) some malls that still have court areas like this, such as the one in front of Bon-Ton! Now that I think of it, doesn’t Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, IL still have a few of those olderish court areas with planters in some of the main parts of the mall(say, where all the hallways converge with each other, and/or around where the “middle” floor is??).
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Allan
March 9th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
And just so I have it straight about the JCPenney at this mall, it used to be in the space where Dick’s Sporting Goods is now? (and that they just built a new store, and moved it over to an area that I guess was in front of what I guess used to be a regular mall entrance?)
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Caldor
March 9th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
Actually, the JCPenney space itself was turned into additional mall space, and JCPenney built a new store on the outside of the mall from their old one. Basically, the entire old JCPenney was converted to mall space (and part of it did become Dick’s later on) and JCPenney built a new store next to their old one, which connects to the portion of the mall that is in their former store.
Also, XISMZERO, to tell you the truth, the dearth of photos is because most of the mall is relatively bland. The Bon Ton court is flat-out amazing, and I would’ve taken more pictures (possibly even some *real* pictures), but there were two guys hanging around in the middle of the court and not moving, so I would’ve looked kind of strange. The Bon Ton court is easy to miss, btw, because it’s down a side hallway and isn’t terribly visible when you walk down the main concourse. In fact, I visited Aviation Mall once before in 2000 and didn’t wander down that way, missing it entirely. Because the wing leading to The Bon Ton is narrow, the only part you can really see from the main portion of the mall is the store’s sign and entrance.
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Chris Whittaker
March 9th, 2007 at 10:18 pm
I was up in this mall in July of last year on a trip up to Plattsburgh. In some ways, it is representative of the early era Pyramid malls. Unlike the one in Ithaca, this mall did not undergo the full remodel in the mid 80’s, keeping some of the foliage in the Bon-Ton area. In the late 90’s Pyramid proposed expanding several of their malls (Pyramid Mall in Ithaca and Salmon Run Mall being two of these, along with Aviation) From the looks of it, none of these malls underwent the extent of expansion (usually a proposed doubling of the GLA) that was proposed.
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XISMZERO
March 9th, 2007 at 10:37 pm
So Caldor didn’t have an exterior access entrance? I can’t quite figure out why it would seem so many mall iterations of Caldor didn’t include outside access. Could this have been to repel thievery? Could it have been the mall wanted people to come through the mall in an attempt to increase patrons to see smaller parcels and not just use it for one (anchor) store? I’m more inclined to believe the latter. Looks to me it goes 50/50; Caldor attracts people to the mall thus helping it but they need to ask their customers to walk through it in return for getting more traffic garnered by it (the mall). Then why put a mall entrance beside it? I don’t know, seems to me like antiquated 1970’s mall logic.
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Bobby
March 10th, 2007 at 4:01 am
In most cases where a mall is anchored by a discounter, it seems that they have the store open out into the mall only, to cut down on thievery. Almost every mall-based discount store I’ve ever seen has lacked an external entrance, even if the discounter in question predates the mall (e. g., the now-former Kmart at Alpena Mall; mall was retrofitted onto the Kmart, so the Kmart’s lone entrance became the store’s mall entrance.)
There are some exceptions, however, such as the now-former Kmart at Westwood Mall in Marquette. A former PrangeWay, this store opened out to the mall and to the parking lot; there were checkouts at each entrance. This store is now a Kohl’s, which retains both entrances.
One of my local malls, Bay City Mall, has a Target that opens to the mall and to the parking lot. The mall entrance seems to be seldom used, but it’s right next to a lot of open space (and virtually right next to the exterior entrance too), so it would be easy to spot someone sneaking out into the mall.
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Steven Swain
March 10th, 2007 at 5:08 am
I like the court in front of Bon-Ton in its Caldor configuration better; the updates don’t do it much justice, especially those piddly chandeliers.
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Chris Whittaker
March 11th, 2007 at 12:15 am
The Hills/Ames store in Pyramid Mall was like that originally, with the only entrance being into the mall. Eventually (sometime in the early 90’s an exterior entrance was added, kind of clumsily, to the store, requiring the user to climb a flight of stairs in order to get into the Hills store.
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avionicsgod
March 12th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
I used to work for a place called Oola Candy back in the early 1990’s when I was stationed in Upstate NY. We had a store in Aviation Mall, and several others in Pyramid Co’s malls.
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Scott
March 13th, 2007 at 10:48 pm
Now come on… Another white and pink tile floor. Yes, I know, it’s diffferent because it also has squares of turquoise and black tiles.
Scott
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Dan
May 23rd, 2007 at 1:26 am
I still go to this mall a lot. It has changed quite a bit. I remember that there was a water fountain and bridge that once stood in front of the old CVS and old JCPenney entrance that was removed when they built the addition leading to the new JCPenney.
I also remember sliding down the incline at the easternmost end of the mall that led to Sears as a child. I believe this was one of the last Sears locations to switch from the old non-italicized, thin lettered sign logo to the newer, blue, large lettered and italicized logo. They changed this around 1993 or 1994.
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Laki
June 28th, 2007 at 7:23 pm
Caldor did close in 1998
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sarah
November 2nd, 2007 at 5:03 pm
the second picture with the ruby tuesdays is actually from the wilton mall in saratoga, ny – not the aviation mall.
i’m from glens falls, ny …the aviation mall, back in its hayday, was quite a sight to see. from the water fountains to the “jungle” in front of caldors, it really was a neat mall.
now…it’s just dead.
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Chelsea
November 15th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
I go to the avation mall all the time but it is getting harder now because gas costs so much. I love ho there is now a gym in the mall so after you eat at the non expencive food court you can go and work off the fat. All an all it is a great mall.
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Don
January 17th, 2008 at 8:18 pm
I stumbled upon this blog but I can give some insight. I was the Caldor regional security supervisor when this store was built in 1979, it was where my office was. We opened in September 1979.
As far as the enttrance it was the only one, when you came out you could go right which would take you outside to the parking lot or to the Sears rear entrance.
Going straight took you up to the mall.
Turning left took you outside towards JC Penny and their rear door.
The mall like many others was big in the 80’s and store turnovers was huge. With bookstores, clothing stores, changing all the time.
When I worked there a Troy Savings bank was by one entrance and a great place to eat was also there along with a bakery as you came in and I think Lou’s Pizza. The food court came much later.
As far as Denbys I never remember them being close to Pennys they were more in the middle or closer to Sears, and Denby’s had a front entrance.
Also back then there was no mall security. Caldor had detectives that worked for me and Pennys had a great guy named Walt who was a retired NYC cop and was their secuirty. Sears finally got security around 1983.
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Jonah Norason
February 20th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Target seems like a bizarre location…while many mall Targets take over a vacant spot (think Montgomery Ward) or built as a normal anchor, Target wraps around two former entrances, which seems to justify me calling it a “Parasite Anchor”.
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Dan
March 25th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
Dan, was the Troy Savings Bank at the beginning of the food court? I remember until about the mid 1990’s, there was a Northeast Savings bank in that spot.
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loveminuszero
July 28th, 2008 at 11:07 am
I remember readeing somewhere that there was a Robert Hall Village at this mall at one point? Does anyone know anything about this or where it was located?
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M
January 1st, 2009 at 10:52 pm
I miss the bridge outside Penney’s … there used to be a wide pond outside Penney’s, narrower in the middle, with a little arc bridge over it. You could walk around easily enough, but as a kid, where was the fun in that? I’m glad the part outside the old Caldor is still there, but the bridge was twice as cool.
Oh, and fyi, Target does have two entrances — you can walk straight through from outside the mall out the other side into the mall.
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Derek
January 7th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Denby’s was not where JC Penney’s used to be. Denby’s was located where Old Navy is today.
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Jonah Norason
May 2nd, 2009 at 10:10 am
Sears is leaving this mall….
http://deadmalls.com/malls/aviation_mall.html
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Jason
May 21st, 2009 at 7:44 pm
I grew up in this mall and remember how amazing it was in it’s day. Now, it just makes me sad, although it’s not dead by any means compared to the state of other small malls in the Capital District…I guess I just have a soft spot for the old malls that were dark and dingy, lit only by horrible neon…yay for neon!
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