West Virginia - Labelscar: The Retail History Blog

Martinsburg Mall; Martinsburg, West Virginia

Crown American’s Martinsburg Mall debuted in 1991, located west of downtown directly along I-81. When it opened, the mall was anchored by Wal-Mart, JCPenney, Sears, and Allentown-based Hess’s, with space for about 60 additional retailers, and, according to ICSC, 556,000 square feet in total. Interestingly, Crown American owned Hess’s at the time, so putting a store here was a natural fit. This one level mall also features a food court, and was Crown American’s signature period mall design, similar to the centers they built in Lancaster (which we’ve featured on this site) and Newark, Ohio. All of these malls are designed with two main hallways and a “loop” at one end containing the food court area.

Martinsburg, West Virginia is located in the fast-growing eastern panhandle of the state. With a population of 17,000, Martinsburg is the hub of the eastern panhandle and the county seat of Berkeley County. It’s also part of a larger corridor that stretches along I-81, linking the Shenandoah Valley to western Maryland, including the cities of Winchester, Virginia and Hagerstown, Maryland. Recently, the eastern panhandle of West Virginia has become subject to an influx of new residents from the more populated and nearby Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area.

Martinsburg was a relative late-comer to the mall scene, for a few reasons. First off, malls were built in nearby Hagerstown in 1974, and in Winchester in 1982. Both cities are a short 20-minute drive from Martinsburg. In addition, Martinsburg simply didn’t have the population to support a mall until fairly recently. As late as 1990, Berkeley County only had about half the residents it does today.

In the late 1980s, Pennsylvania mall developer Crown American decided Martinsburg could support a mall, independent of the offerings in nearby Winchester and Hagerstown. At the time, the quiet economy of the eastern panhandle of West Virginia was projected to soar with new businesses (like United Airlines) moving in to capitalize on West Virginia’s business-friendly tax model in tandem with the close proximity to both Washington and Baltimore, which are both about 80 miles away. The anticipated business growth was expected to fuel a massive population boom in Martinsburg, and this eventually did happen; however, it was not because of the business growth that never really materialized, but due to planning policies supporting the massive growth of exurbs and suburban sprawl. The population in the eastern panhandle grew mostly from commuters who were priced out of the Washington/Baltimore markets, wanted more house for their money, a pastoral rural setting, lower crime and taxes, more space, better schools, or any or all of the above. To support this growth, MARC began daily regional train service from Martinsburg, ferrying commuters into Union Station in downtown Washington.

However, unlike some of Crown American’s other malls, Martinsburg Mall was never notably successful. Wal-Mart was always big draw, especially in the mall’s early days when Wal-Marts were new to the national scene. Initially scared about the presence of a new mall in Martinsburg, the malls in both Winchester and Hagerstown fared much better than expected with their brand new competition. Also, both Winchester and Hagerstown built extensive retail strip areas and large power centers surrounding each of their malls, which became regional draws in themselves. By comparison, Martinsburg had fewer ancillary retail centers; so, even though Martinsburg had the mall, area residents still went to either Winchester or Hagerstown to do other shopping.

In 1994, Crown American sold off its Hess’s stores, and the Martinsburg Mall location became a Bon Ton.

Wal-Mart made a contentious decision affecting Martinsburg Mall in 1998, and it became an obvious wound to the center. Wal-Mart renovated its store into a Supercenter format that year, and subsequently shut their entrance to the mall entirely. Because Wal-Mart likely owns their parcel separate from the mall, this decision was apparently allowed with no say from Crown American. I’m sure W-M probably even studied that their loss would be mitigated by not operating two separate entrances, and that they’d continue to do business there just fine, but this has to be annoying and inconvenient for shoppers who value convenience and want to visit other businesses in the mall. If it’s snowing, raining, too cold, or too hot outside I’m sure people would have appreciated the connection. Wal-Mart continues to be the most popular destination at Martinsburg Mall, and requiring shoppers to go outside and go back in to visit any of the other stores, to me, seems kind of rude. I’m sure it was a major blow to the mall itself, dropping foot traffic considerably. Here’s Wal-Mart’s former mall entrance – they boarded it up and put up a mystery structure to tease us:

In 1999, Hagerstown’s Valley Mall embarked upon a major expansion project, adding a wing of stores and a new Hecht’s (later Macy’s), Old Navy, and a multiplex cinema. As I mentioned earlier, big box power centers and retail strip began to pop up in Hagerstown, and in Winchester, but not so much in Martinsburg. Visiting popular national stores like Target, Kohls, Petsmart, Borders, Circuit City, Office Max and Dicks required driving to Hagerstown and/or Winchester, and probably helped the malls in those cities due to synergy. This same lack of synergy disallowed Martinsburg Mall to reach its full potential, if it had any to begin with.

By the 2000s, the outlook for Martinsburg Mall continued to be bleak, though far from completely dead. In 2004, Crown American was sold to another Pennsylvania company, PREIT, who promptly unloaded Martinsburg Mall and a bunch of other “non-core assets”. The mall’s new owner, Lightstone Group, operated the mall under its subsidiary Prime Retail, and ended up defaulting on the mall by 2008, returning it to its lender in early 2009.

Meanwhile, the retail synergy that Martinsburg Mall hoped to possibly capture finally came in the form of a massive power center that opened in 2009, an exit south of the mall and on the other side of I-81. The Commons, owned by AIG Baker, is a multi-anchor power center featuring Target, Best Buy, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Books-a-Million, Five Below, Staples, Michaels, TJ Maxx, Bed Bath and Beyond, and Petsmart, with many smaller stores and restaurants to boot. The Commons is clearly a slap in the face to Martinsburg Mall, who would have probably gladly welcomed some of those tenants. On the other hand, the growing WV panhandle probably appreciates not having to drive 20 minutes to Winchester or Hagerstown to shop anymore.

In early 2010, Mountain State University, based in Beckley, West Virginia, a considerable distance from Martinsburg, bought the mall from receivership with plans to expand into the mall and hold classes there. MSU had already operated a Martinsburg campus from a former outlet mall it purchased in 1999. As of early 2011, though, the campus has not yet moved from its current location into Martinsburg Mall.

Today, Martinsburg Mall is far from dead, and seemingly not in rapid decline. Yet, the offerings here have always been meager, and it seems though for its size it isn’t – and hasn’t ever – reached its full potential. Maybe Martinsburg didn’t need a mall – even despite all its growth there are two formidable ones only twenty minutes away, and the entire Washington-Baltimore metropolitan area is just over an hour’s drive. There are still national stores here, but also quite a bit of vacancy. The college hopes that synergy can be achieved by opening up disused parts of the mall to classes, and that’s not a terrible idea. College students are certainly an appropriate demographic for malls, so hopefully it’s not too late.

I visited Martinsburg Mall in April 2011 and took the pictures featured here. I was very entertained by some of the folks at the mall, as well as by some of the local stores that operate here. In the food court, one popular stand offering ice cream was named “55-60s Ice Cream” – not sure what that means, but it looked good. Can anyone explain? Also, look at this man, whose advertisement is placed on a dead storefront. He’s really excited about home improvement:

Also roving the mall the evening I visited were two very amorous young gay men and their female friend, who had no qualms about public displays of affection. And giggling. And lastly, not to get anyone in trouble, but the sight of the girl working the customer service/information booth totally engrossed in FarmVille on a giant, outdated CRT monitor made me giggle. I actually always appreciate and absorb the people watching, culture, and local color in a mall, for better – or even sometimes – for worse. It’s amusing, and it’s something that isn’t usually transferred by the myriad of strip or outdoor malls that lack public gathering spaces. Food for thought. As always, feel free to leave your own comments and experiences concerning this mall.

Photos from April 2011:

Mountaineer Mall; Morgantown, West Virginia

I’m talking about Mountaineer Mall. Located in Morgantown, West Virginia, Mountaineer Mall is the kind of mall dead mall fans dream about, with all sorts of retail antiquities and dated accoutrements. We’re talking about wooden railings with tarnished, aging brass fixtures, brick facades, tile- and wood panel-laden planter fixtures, intact dead store facades from 20+ years ago, and more. Mountaineer Mall was once the dominant – and only – mall in the Morgantown region. Located 70 miles south of Pittsburgh, Morgantown is home to West Virginia University and has the healthiest economy in the state. It has a population of around 30,000 residents, which nearly doubles when the University is in session, and a metropolitan area of 115,000 to boot. Morgantown has a quirky, progressive college town feel, and with its low unemployment and unique culture feels mightily juxtaposed to the rest of the state, or anywhere for that matter. One example of this is the fact that the small city has its own rail-based mass transit, a people mover called the Morgantown Personal Rapid Transit system, which connects downtown Morgantown to the WVU satellite campus located a few miles away.

Attention, dead mall fans: this one’s for you. The following gem of a mall is almost completely dead, totally unrenovated and as dated as they come. It’s just as interesting as other deadmall icons like Southwyck, Machesney Park, Summit Place, Rolling Acres, Randall Park, or any of those, but hasn’t received nearly as much fan press. And, as of July 2010 it is still open for regular business with no imminent plans for closure.

In fact, this is one of the last ones left of its kind. Most dead malls, like all the aforementioned, got gobbled up by the redevelopment machine, or at the very least closed their doors permanently and sit waiting for the wrecking ball, so getting inside for a tour isn’t within reach. Nope, friends, this one is open for business, 10-9 weekdays and Saturdays, and Sundays noon to 5. Not only this, it’s only a few hours from the Mid-Atlantic states and a day’s drive from nearly anywhere east of the Mississippi.

Mountaineer Mall was once the dominant – and only – mall in the Morgantown region. Located 70 miles south of Pittsburgh, Morgantown is home to West Virginia University and has the healthiest economy in the state. It has a population of around 30,000 residents, which nearly doubles when the University is in session, and a metropolitan area of 115,000 to boot. Morgantown has a quirky, progressive college town feel, and with its low unemployment and unique culture feels mightily juxtaposed to the rest of the state, or anywhere for that matter. One example of this is the fact that the small city has its own rail-based mass transit, a people mover called the Morgantown Personal Rapid Transit system, which connects downtown Morgantown to the WVU satellite campus located a few miles away.

Mountaineer Mall originally opened in 1975 on a bluff, high above the Monongahela River, on the south side of Morgantown. It had a goal of capturing local shoppers who were forced to drive either to Pittsburgh, where the closest major malls, South Hills Village and Century III Mall, were 60 miles away, or down to Fairmont, where the tiny Middletown Mall sat. Anchored by JCPenney, Montgomery Ward, and Murphy’s Mart, Mountaineer Mall had a simple dumbbell shape when it opened. Murphy’s Mart was the western anchor closest to the river, JCPenney sat adjacent to center court, and Montgomery Ward flanked the eastern end of the mall; an enclosed corridor with stores on both sides connected all three anchors.

Even though Mountaineer Mall was small, it became immensely popular and gained a loyal following in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Too soon, though, Mountaineer Mall’s owners realized the mall was too small to serve the area, and embarked on an expansion in 1987, adding a fourth anchor, Stone and Thomas, and an additional hallway connecting it to the mall. This gave the mall a T-shape once the renovation was complete. Meanwhile, an anchor change took place around 1985, when Murphy’s Mart became Ames.

The new addition, with its late-80s appearance, featured smart looking brass fixtures, fake skylights, and a brighter look than the rest of the 8-year-old mall. In addition, due to the natural topography of the site, the developer chose to build the addition on a slight incline, giving the mall corridor a handicapped-accessible carpeted ramp down the middle and stairs flanking either side. This is definitely, by the way, an amazingly unique design feature, which seemingly gives the mall not only an extra dimension of space but also a disjointed, frankenmall-like weird quality. The new addition also brought stores with only exterior entrances on one side, which ironically house most of the stores still in operation today.

Unfortunately, Mountaineer Mall’s time in the sun was short-lived. Three years after the addition, in September of 1990, Mountaineer Mall’s luck ran out when competition came calling from the brand-new, $70-million Morgantown Mall, which opened across the river, just two miles as the crow flies from Mountaineer Mall, but farther via roads. The new 557,954 square-foot mall was anchored by Sears, JCPenney, Elder-Beerman, and K-mart. JCPenney chose to immediately bolt to the new mall when it opened in 1990, but Elder Beerman kept a location at both malls until 1998. Not only was Morgantown Mall larger and newer than Mountaineer Mall, it was better located along Interstate 79 to serve customers from outside the area, such as Washington County, Pennsylvania.

After the loss of JCPenney, Mountaineer Mall soldiered on, eventually replacing the former JCPenney space with U.S. Factory Outlets in 1993; however, anchor changes occurred until the end of the 1990s. In January 1994, Ames, who had another location in Morgantown, was replaced with a 126,000 square-foot Wal-Mart, the first in the area. The popularity of Wal-Mart routinely filled the parking lot to capacity, and the mall soldiered on against its newer cousin across the river. U.S. Factory Outlets eventually closed and was replaced by Gabriel Brothers, a regional off-price chain based in Morgantown. Then, in 1998, Stone and Thomas went broke and was forced to sell out to Elder Beerman. Somewhat surprisingly, Elder Beerman chose to continue operating in Mountaineer Mall after the acquisition, despite already having a duplicate store two miles away at Morgantown Mall.

The first decade of the new millenium was extremely unkind to Mountaineer Mall, as the mall lost all four of its anchors, three of them in short spacing. In 2000, Montgomery Ward announced it was going out of business nationwide and closed the last remaining original anchor at Mountaineer Mall. The next anchor to depart was Wal-Mart, which abandoned the mall due to a non-compete agreement with grocery store Giant Eagle that barred it from opening a Supercenter with grocery on the site; it closed in October 2006, the same day two new Supercenters opened elsewhere in Morgantown.

About the same time Wal-Mart jumped ship, anchor Gabriel Brothers, which is headquartered in Morgantown, opened a brand new store across town, and began to offer fewer items at their Mountaineer Mall location. After over a year of progressively emptier shelves, it became apparent that Gabriel Brothers was slowly abandoning the Mountaineer Mall store, and it finally closed in 2008.

Elder Beerman, which surprisingly stayed at the mall for ten years despite having a redundant store in Morgantown Mall across the river, also closed in 2008. In a span of less than two years, Morgantown Mall went from having three anchors to having zero anchors. At the same time, many in-line stores cleared out as well. A listing of stores from 2001 can be found here via the wayback machine – sadly, many of these are now gone.

As of 2010, the only stores remaining in the mall are listed here. Of these, many are either in outlots, like Giant Eagle, Georgia Carpet Outlet and Dunham’s Sports, or have exterior entrances, like CATO and Goodwill. A hair salon, Subway, nail salon, and some non-profit service organizations operate within the mall, as well as a pizza parlor and Chinese buffet. A local country and craft store, The Barn Yard, also operates in the mall, but unfortunately is closing tomorrow (7/21/10); however, they are relocating and will reopen in August. Mountaineer Mall’s website also indicates a transition from retail to office space, which began a decade ago with the retenanting of Montgomery Ward with a TeleTech call center and a building supply outlet.

Elsewhere on the net: Visit Mountaineer Mall’s Facebook page, and a great Flickr set by Andrew Turnbull.

We visited Mountaineer Mall in July 2009 and took the pictures featured here.

Charleston Town Center; Charleston, West Virginia

With a population just over 50,000 in the city and over 300,000 people in its metropolitan area, Charleston is not only the seat of state government but also the largest city in the state of West Virginny. In its early days, Charleston grew and prospered due to manufacturing and deposits of natural resources such as salt, coal, and natural gas; however, today the diversified economy of West Virginia includes more than these natural resources and has expanded and shifted to focus on trade, medicine, and government. This transition, however, hasn’t exactly been smooth, and parts of Charleston have experienced periods of both blight and renewal.

By the early 1980s, Charleston’s downtown was in dire need of a makeover due to a changing economy taking hard-earned dollars away from the area and taking its toll on the physical structure of the city as a result. To help Charleston out, the largest urban mall east of the Mississippi River was constructed along several blocks downtown and was completed in November 1983, along with other new developments that would encourage growth. Charleston Town Center opened with four department store spaces and almost one million square feet of retail space, on three levels. In addition, the mall is attached to a 350-room Marriott hotel which serves downtown business and convention-goers.

Charleston Town Center has enjoyed a significant amount of success largely due to its location and accessibility. Charleston benefitted tremendously from the signing of Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway Act in 1956, which placed Charleston at the hub of three interstates (64, 77, and 79) which allow for fast passage through West Virginia’s rough and rugged terrain, connecting it to cities in the Midwest, South, and Northeast; in fact, 60% of the United States population is within a day’s drive of Charleston. This location of the interstates has allowed Charleston to retain its status as the hub for its regional retail market, which stretches across much of central West Virginia, and all of these interstates converge close to the mall with easy access. In addition, planners were wise to build ample, cheap ($1.75 all day as of 2008 with 4000 spaces) parking structures to serve the mall’s accessibility so shoppers aren’t as frustrated trying to find a place to put their cars.

However, being hemmed in the middle of an urban core has also presented disadvantages and inconveniences for shoppers, and possibly the mall itself. Most of the big box retail strip, chain restaurants, and other such novelties are located a fair distance from the mall along US 119 southwest of downtown, about 5 miles from the mall. So, unlike many retail markets where the mall is located as the focus for big box strip fodder and shoppers can make the rounds easily, shoppers in Charleston do double duty to visit both big box/strip mall retailers and the mall itself. Furthermore, although parking is relatively cheap and convenient in the structures at the mall, most suburban malls, by nature, have tons of free parking, so this may frustrate some shoppers here. It hasn’t seemed to have made a significant dent in sales, though, as this is clearly Charleston’s dominant mall and has a solid store base with limited vacancies.

The design of Charleston Town Center is a mostly two-level straight shot on a north-south axis, with a third level tacked onto the center court which functions as the mall’s food court, Picnic Place. Picnic Place made headlines in 2004 when mall management refused to renew the leases for two food court tenants – McDonald’s and Long John Silver’s – because management felt that more healthy options should be made available, and also because they wanted to reconfigure the food court. In the end, the food stalls were relegated to about half of the food court space on the third level, and offices were put in the other half. At least the Greek/Mediterranean place is still there. The center court is also the mall’s most impressive feature, with a wide, bright atrium and a maze-like fountain on the first level with a kiosk Starbucks as the centerpiece. Interestingly, a major renovation of Charleston Town Center has only taken place once, in 1992, so the mall today is somewhat dated.

Charleston Town Center’s store mix is solid, with many popular – and even somewhat upscale – national brands like Hollister, Abercrombie and Fitch, Talbots, AE, and the like. The mall has two anchor pads on each end, which are currently occupied by Macy’s and Sears on the south end and JCPenney and Steve and Barry’s on the north end of the mall. Until 2001, one of the south anchors was Montgomery Ward, and after its closure the property sat vacant until 2007 when it was sold to the mall, and sold again to BrickStreet Insurance, who took most of the former anchor space along with a dead Bob Evans. The space closest to the mall was converted into in-line stores on the first level, and Steve and Barry’s on the second level. Also, the current Macy’s was Pittsburgh-based Kaufmann’s until 2006.

We visited Charleston in July 2008 and took the pictures featured here. If you know any more about the history of the mall or the area, comments are always appreciated.