Shoppingtown Mall; DeWitt, New York
The Syracuse area may be dominated by one very large mall, but there are two other substantially-sized malls that are still operating in the metropolitan area, and the Shoppingtown Mall (which has no relation to Westfield’s “Shoppingtown” malls) is the area’s second largest mall, with just over 1 million square feet. Serving Syracuse’s eastern suburbs, it seems to be struggling much like many other Syracuse-area malls before it.
Built in 1954 as an open-air center, Shoppingtown Mall was one of Syracuse’s first suburban shopping centers, with W.T. Grant’s, Woolworth, E.G. Edwards, Dey’s, and The Addis Co. as anchor stores. The mall was enclosed in 1975 along with the addition of JCPenney in the former E.G. Edwards space, and substantially renovated and expanded in 1991. Syracuse-based department store chain Chapell’s also entered the mall at some point. The last expansion brought Steinbach, a relocated Addis & Dey’s, and a new wing of stores. While I’m not entirely sure, I would estimate that the two-level portion of the mall that now houses Macy’s and the food court is the newest addition. Chapell’s was sold to The Bon Ton in 1995, and The Addis Co. and Dey’s merged into one chain at some point though I’m unable to find when. Kaufmann’s replaced them in their second location in the mall in 1993.
The mall’s anchors today are Macy’s (until recently the Kaufmann’s store), Sears, Dick’s Sporting Goods, JCPenney, and a 10-screen Regal Cinemas. While the mall is bright and clean and sports a very unique and dynamic layout, Shoppingtown has very recently lost The Bon Ton, Old Navy, and Media Play as well as many smaller stores, especially on the long, sloped Sears wing.
Despite its commercial malaise, Shoppingtown is a very neat mall. Because it was added onto over time, it has a strange floorplan that can best be described as an “L” with an “X” hanging off one end. Part of the mall is two-level, while another part is on a rather steep grade sloping from the second floor down to the first.
I’ve attempted to organize these photos in a logical way, since there are three very distinctively diferent areas in the Shoppingtown Mall. Moving from right to left according to the mall directory, this first group of photos are the indoor and outdoor shots from the two-level portion of the mall, with Macy’s, JCPenney, and the food court:
The second set of photos were taken in the long, one-level wing stretching between the former Bon Ton store to the former Old Navy store, across the central portion of the mall:
And the third set is from my favorite wing of the mall, the long wing stretching from Dick’s Sporting Goods, past the former Old Navy and Media Play stores, and down to the Sears store. This entire wing is on a steady downhill slope from Old Navy down to Sears, and you can see the grading if you look towards the edge of the mall corridor, in front of the stores. Note also that there’s a basement courtyard with offices and a mall entrance in the middle of this wing. Two teenagers were actually down there making out–which is quite a testament to how quiet it was in this part of the mall on a Saturday afternoon–and I briefly considered taking a photo until I remembered I was a kid once… not that long ago. I’m not a bad person, so I refrained.
Bobby
October 21st, 2006 at 6:22 pm
Very cool layout. I wonder why that Sears wing is so dead though?
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Chris Whittaker
October 22nd, 2006 at 12:07 am
I went there a couple of years ago. Very bizzare design, several uses that fill the dead spots (public library branch being one) that aren’t in regional malls very often, and struggling since the new ownership has sat on its hands while the time is ripe to revitalize the place.
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Scott
October 22nd, 2006 at 3:35 pm
The mall looks nice. I love the glass roof and the water feature in front of Penney’s. Too bad its struggling; I hope things pick up for them. I wonder why The Bon Ton went out. I thought they were a thriving chain?
Scott
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Syracuse: An Interesting Case Study » Labelscar: The Retail History Blog
October 22nd, 2006 at 4:26 pm
[...] Shoppingtown Mall; DeWitt, New York [...]
Jeff
October 23rd, 2006 at 3:23 pm
I preferred shopping here over the enormous Carousel Center. Bon Ton closed its store here and at Great Northern Mall then Media Play went out of business chainwide. The mall was doing very well even last Christmas but now seems to be hemorraging tenants so I am forced to shop elsewhere.
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XISMZERO
October 23rd, 2006 at 7:59 pm
Saw this mall off I-87 coming back from the [not-so] Great Northern Mall upon my recent trip to Syracuse-area. We were going to stop in, but my camera took a turn for the worse…
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Laura
October 24th, 2006 at 3:54 am
The picture of the food court with the escalators in the foreground reminds me of a reversed version of the food court in Mayfair Mall in Milwaukee, WI.
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Bobby
October 24th, 2006 at 6:49 pm
I wonder if this mall has the record for “mall that has seen the most anchors come and go”?
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Marky
December 1st, 2006 at 7:52 pm
The Sears wing is largely vacant due to the move of a couple of tenants to the newly revitalized Marshalls Plaza down Erie Blvd. from the mall. My wife worked at the Famous Footwear store in that mall for many years and often heard talk of the mall’s return to a strip (a.k.a. Lifestyle) center. The once popular Fayetteville mall on the eastern edge of town was successfully transformed into a Lifestyle center after an extended period of vacany. It now houses a Target, P&C Food market, Stickley and Kohl’s. There is also a T.J. Maxx store that used to be in the old Mall.
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XISMZERO
May 25th, 2007 at 10:48 pm
Update on Shoppingtown Mall (with pictures!). Like other Macerich-owned centers, Shoppingtown is to become *gasp* (you guessed it) lifestylized under a proposed renovation!
They’re awaiting town approval to do this renovation which seeks to de-enclose the Sears-Dick’s wing, which I was literally floored when I walked upon it and it’s lopsided, off-kilter grades. Sadly, the renovation or “lifestyling” sees an end to the totally groovin’ octo-ramp right before it. This explains why so many tenants have gone dark. It’s been a while since I had an architecturally bizarre mall experience.
I feel your humanity there, Caldor which is why I shot a satisfying amount of images of the marvelous Sears wing. I’ll bet they were making out down near the library….
Here’s my full gallery of shots taken just this past 22nd of May. I almost got snagged by security for taking one of the photos here but he oddly, after following me a bit, desisted. Enjoy!
http://new.photos.yahoo.com/xismzero/album/576460762402670562
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Bob8888
July 9th, 2007 at 3:21 pm
Thanks to all for the photos! I grew up hanging out at Shoppingtown in the 70s and saw many changes. I also got busted by security taking my own video tour in 1998. I was just finishing up so I didn’t care. I think the mall got too big and expensive – and of course the never-ending lousy central NY economy didn’t help either (let’s raise taxes even more!)
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Jonah Norason
September 24th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
The creator of Penn Can Mall.com has created a page dedicated to Shoppingtown Mall. Nice stuff here. See?
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Jonah Norason
April 3rd, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Questions/comments: According to the official site, the Sears wing is super dead. In the floor of the area between where the other hallway meets and Sears is, there are 30 storefronts (includes outdoor-only storefront), C.J. Banks, Able II Driving School, Perfume Hut, Nail Trix 2000, Pools Brook Driving Range, and…that’s it! They don’t seem to be demalling it yet.
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Caldor
April 3rd, 2008 at 8:14 pm
That wing was largely vacant even in 2006 when these photos were taken. A friend of mine who lives in the area actually said the reason no construction has started is because there’s been very little interest in leasing for the outdoor lifestyle portion (which is unsurprising since Syracuse is one of the snowiest cities in America), so they haven’t had any reason to bother yet.
Shoppingtown is a really cool mall, and the Sears wing is possibly the best part. It would be a shame for them to de-mall it, especially in a city that could use indoor gathering spaces.
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Jonah Norason
April 3rd, 2008 at 8:17 pm
Furthermore, it’s weird why Shoppingtown never had a discount store (as all the New York/New England malls did, whether it be Hills, Ames, Caldor, Bradlees, or Kmart.
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Scott Mercer
October 6th, 2008 at 3:16 am
Okay, my memories of Shoppingtown in the pre-Carousel era. It was hopping on the weekends. I was in college at the time, mid Eighties We even did a remote from there while I was working on the college radio station one time (it was in the sloping wing, everyone’s favorite, in front of Bob’s Big Boy). Yes, there was a Bob’s, as well as a Woolworth’s that looked like it hadn’t been TOUCHED since the mall opened 30 years earlier. I used to go down to their basement where they had a rack of vinyl record albums for a DIME (!) that I would pick through. Ten records for a buck, and I was a happy camper. They were all 10-15 year-old record albums too, that had probably been sitting in that same rack at that time.
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Erik
October 27th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
I grew up in the area and Shoppingtown was the best mallrat hangout for anyone who didn’t live directly in downtown Syracuse. Conveniently close to the DeWitt/Fayetteville side of Erie Boulevard and just the right mix of weird shops and old staples to keep people coming back. Probably the main killer of the sloping Sears wing in recent years was Media Play completely going under as a store chain. It cut the heart out of the entertainment/electronics sales in the mall and stores around it slowly started dying off like plants without water.
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Timothy
February 7th, 2009 at 12:32 am
I was at the mall today…just hanging out with my friends. I feel it would benefit you all to know that the Sears wing is now COMPLETELY Dead…
It’s still a cool place to hang out due to the massage chairs available, the privacy, the cool architectural design and the carpeted floor.
There’s a golf training center in an old store and Branch’s Driving School in the basement of that portion and that is IT for the Sears wing. There must be nearly 20-25 perfectly suitable store spaces which are now vacant. And what is sad is that nearly half of the stores which once inhabited these spaces have only moved to other more ‘lively’ areas of the mall.
Sears thrives of course and believe it or not people still make the long trek from the end of the hallway to Sears even though there are NO stores along the way.
I hope they revitalize the Sears wing and do not close it off/ tear it down, making Sears an Open Store…all the mall needs is a Solid Anchor Store in the old Media Play space and the area would revitalize.
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Bobby
March 19th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
Any idea what was originally in the Old Navy and Media Play spaces? I’m assuming one was the Woolworth.
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Joel
March 25th, 2009 at 4:04 am
I was out there today, and I just have to say that seeing the mall in its current state is really rather depressing. To walk down to the Sears wing just reminds me of how wonderful the mall was when it was at its prime, with Media Play and such stores still going strong.
Does anyone know what they are doing? I read some of their renovation plans on their website, but the articles seem to be nearly 2 or 3 years old. Same with the pictures here. What are they waiting for? Eerie Boulevard is such a prosperous retail area, and you would think the owners of such a mall would make greater strides to move in businesses and get the shoppers coming back.
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Ruth
June 18th, 2009 at 10:18 am
Shoppingtown does NOT I repeat NOT need to be a strip mall !!! Way to much snow for a strip mall!! People want to be INSIDE.
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Jack Thomas
July 31st, 2009 at 11:12 am
Booby, I believe the Media Play space was the Woolworth’s. Not 100% positive though.
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Russ
September 2nd, 2009 at 11:25 pm
There is a typo in your introduction. You state that “EG Edwards” was an original anchor of Shoppingtown. The store’s name was actually EW Edwards and Sons.
Edwards’ was a early 20th century chain, with three huge downtown stores in Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse. I believe that the Edwards family was from Syracuse.
The Edwards stores prospered through the mid-20th century, when they were sold to Almy-Gorin Stores of Boston in the 1970s, owners of several New England legendary stores, including RH White, and The Star Store. The downtown stores closed in all three cities (although I believe that they may have pulled out of the Buffalo area earlier than the 1970s).
I do not know about any of the Edwards branch stores in Buffalo or Syracuse, but there were two in Rochester, at the Pittsford and Ridgemont Plazas. They continued to operate under the Edwards name until the early 1980s, when they suddenly took the Almy’s nameplate. The Pittsford store was completely renovated, but the Ridgemont store was not, a charming but dated reminder of what branch stores looked like in the early 1960s. By 1985, both Almy stores closed.
There doesn’t seem to be a lot of information out there about Edwards in the research that I’ve done. But they were an important store in Central and Western New York, especially in Rochester and Syracuse.
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