ShoppingTown Mall

ShoppingTown Mall is a regional shopping mall in Dewitt, New York. It opened as an open-air shopping center in 1954, and was converted to an enclosed mall in 1975. As of January 2020, it has 5 stores and services and is only anchored by a fourteen-screen Regal Cinemas movie theater. In under a year it went from 52 to 7 stores.[1]

ShoppingTown Mall
ShoppingTown main entrance
Location
Coordinates43.0406°N 76.06411°W / 43.0406; -76.06411
Opening date1954 (as a strip mall, then enclosed in 1975)
DeveloperEagan Real Estate Inc.
OwnerOnondaga County, New York
No. of stores and services5 (125 at peak)
No. of anchor tenants0 (5 at peak)
Total retail floor area988,054 sq ft (91,793.2 m2)
No. of floors2
Websitewww.shoppingtownmall.com

History

ShoppingTown opened in 1954[2][3] as one of Syracuse's first suburban open-air shopping centers.[4] Early tenants included Dey Brothers department store, The Addis Company (later merged into Addis and Dey's), Woolworth, W.T. Grant, and a Kallet movie theater.[5] A Grand Union supermarket was added on the eastern end.

Television station WNYS-TV opened its first studios in the basement of ShoppingTown when it began broadcasting in 1962. The studio caught fire in April 1967. The call letters were changed to WIXT-TV in 1978, and the station moved from ShoppingTown to new studios on nearby Bridge Street in East Syracuse in 1985.

After expanding several times in the 1960s, ShoppingTown was converted to an enclosed shopping mall in 1975,[6] and was substantially remodeled in 1991.[4] The mall was owned by Macerich, which acquired it from Wilmorite Properties in 2005, but was sold in 2011 to Jones Lang LaSalle. Macerich continued to manage the mall until 2012, when the new owners took over for management.[7] In 2014, MoonBeam Capital Investments bought the mall for 13.6 million.

In 2010 CNY Gymnastics'opened.[8] This was part of a trend in which local businesses and community groups filled some of the space created by the loss of national retail tenants.[9] The mall lost three of its four anchor tenants. Macy's left the mall in March 2015. Dick's Sporting Goods closed and moved down the road in October 2015. And J.C. Penney was the anchor store to go away in April 2016.[10] In February 2015, Moonbeam Capital Investments proposed plans to demolish the Sears wing and turn it into a strip mall.[11] This has been halted indefinitely because of a tax dispute.[12]

As of 2017, future plans include repurposing facilities to include office, healthcare, and education tenants.[13]

As of April 2018, the mall only had about 50 stores and services left in the mall, and 2/5 of the tenants shown are considered services or studio tenants, rather than stores.[14] The food court is also now abandoned after its last tenant, Ming Wok, closed in January 2018.[15]

As of September 2, 2018, Sears was the final anchor store to be thrown out of business.[16]

Foreclosure

On June 24, 2019, the mall's owner, Moonbeam Capital Investments, went into default after failure to paying back $9.7 million in taxes. Onondaga County, New York is now attempting to seize the mall. The owners have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, delaying the foreclosure process. It is uncertain if the mall will be shutting down.[17]

References
  1. "Shoppingtown Mall Directory".
  2. "Malls to Main Streets in New York State". Empirestatefuture.org. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  3. "Update: Mall's owner responds to Schumer". syracuse.com. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  4. "Shoppingtown Mall; DeWitt, New York - Labelscar". Labelscar: The Retail History Blog. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  5. "DeadMalls.com: Shoppingtown Mall: Dewitt (near Syracuse), New York". Deadmalls.com. Retrieved 23 May 2017.
  6. "Macerich - Investor Relations - Press Releases". Phx.corporate-ir.net. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  7. Bob Niedt (2007-03-13). "ShoppingTown goes open-air". The Post-Standard. Retrieved 2007-08-05.
  8. "New theater company, Central New York Playhouse, will open Nov. 1 in ShoppingTown Mall". Blog.syracuse.com. Retrieved 23 May 2017.
  9. "CNY Playhouse signs new lease at ShoppingTown: 'There are people that love this mall'". Syracuse.com. Retrieved 23 May 2017.
  10. "ShoppingTown Mall: See list of all the stores 40 years ago, 25 years ago and today". Syracuse.com. Retrieved 23 May 2017.
  11. "ShoppingTown owner: We want to demolish large part of mall in major redesign". Syracuse.com. Retrieved 23 May 2017.
  12. "Why county taxpayers are forced to refund $2.4 million to ShoppingTown Mall's owner". Syracuse.com. Retrieved 23 May 2017.
  13. "ShoppingTown owners not selling; 'finalizing' plans to repurpose mall". Syracuse.com. Retrieved 23 May 2017.
  14. "Shoppingtown Mall Directory".
  15. Elizabeth Doran (January 9, 2018). "ShoppingTown Mall's last food court restaurant closes". Syracuse.com. Retrieved April 11, 2018.
  16. Elizabeth Doran (May 31, 2018). "Sears at ShoppingTown Mall set to close, employees say". Syracuse.com. Retrieved May 31, 2018.
  17. Pietzold, Joshua (2019-06-24). "ShoppingTown Mall misses deadline to pay $9.7 million in back taxes". WSTM. Retrieved 2019-06-24.
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