The Phillipsburg Mall has very little time left. Since being popularized in a video tour by Dan Bell released in January 2016, the mall has declined significantly. The owners now openly say that the property will be de-malled, and that process has already begun with the demolition of the former Sears department store. As the Phillipsburg Mall prepares to go silently into the night, let's look at the full history of the property.
**UPDATED**
Upon reaching the Phillipsburg Mall for the first time in June of 2019, I chose an absolute gem of a main entrance to enter from. None of the mall entrances actually say "Phillipsburg Mall" or "Mall Entrance" or anything like that. Instead they just advertise stores inside. Obviously Old Navy no longer exists in this mall, and they couldn't be bothered to paint over that labelscar. If you look closely to the left of the Black Rose Antiques sign, you can also see part of the labelscar for the old JCPenney, which left the mall in 2014.
The Phillipsburg Mall was conceived by Crown American, a major shopping mall developer based in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Announced in 1985, the mall was to feature Sears, Bradlees, and Hess's department stores. Hess's was a locally-significant department store (based in nearby Allentown) and at the time was a fully-owned subsidiary of Crown American with locations all around the eastern US but especially in the mid-Atlantic. Bradlees was a discount department store chain based in Boston. It was hoped that the Phillipsburg Mall would open by late 1986 or early 1987, but there were significant delays related to highway and sewage concerns. During this time, in 1988, Bradlees went private as a result of a leveraged buyout that resulted in a debt of $1.4 billion for the company. In order to be rid of some of this debt load, the Bradlees chain put its southern division up for sale. This included all of the existing Bradlees stores in Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey. Bradlees would later change their plans and ultimately decide to keep their existing stores in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley, and also confirmed that the Phillipsburg store would open as planned. However, Crown American was no longer convinced of Bradlees long-term prospects, and decided to release Bradlees from their lease obligations at the mall. Kmart, then America's largest discounter and 2nd-largest retailer in general (behind only Sears) took the spot originally intended for Bradlees in the lineup.
This flashy facade welcomed shoppers to Hess's department store at the Phillipsburg Mall. This was one of the very last Hess's department stores ever to open, as the slowed retail climate of the 90s caused the indebted Hess's operation to decline. Reportedly, this was Hess's 74th store, and most sources say Hess's had 76 stores at its height in 1990. Interestingly, it was the first store Hess's had opened in its home Lehigh Valley area market since 1977, when Hess's opened its store at the Stroud Mall in Stroudsburg.
The mall finally opened unofficially on Wednesday, September 20th, 1989. It held a grand opening and ribbon-cutting on Sunday, September 24th, 1989, with spectacular turnout. According to Crown American Chairman and CEO Frank J. Pasquerilla, it was the largest crowd for a mall opening in the history of Crown American, which then owned 29 malls. The crowd was so large and unexpected that the Hess's department store canceled its ribbon-cutting to let eager shoppers in an hour early. Even celebrities greeted shoppers - former NY Yankee Sparky Lyle made an appearance at Hess's, and Miss Teenage America Cathy Bliss showed up at Kmart. More retailers continued to open through early 1990, culminating in the grand opening of JCPenney as a fourth anchor that Spring. Crown American had plans for a proposed expansion to add several more inline stores and a fifth department store, but this expansion never came about.
Despite the mall being such a smash hit on opening day, there were some worries that the property wasn't drawing enough customers as early as one year after opening. It was noted by some that new retail centers often need as much as 3 years to become successful as they wait for consumers to alter their spending habits away from their previous shopping destinations and towards the new one. Still, many merchants were concerned. One problem identified was that the mall had ten different jewelry stores - though the jewelers reported that their sales were strong. Others complained of the lack of men's apparel, as few menswear stores occupied the mall and the smaller size of the department store anchors led to scaled back men's selections (Sears was the largest anchor at 110,000 square feet; Kmart was 82,000 sf, while JCPenney was 69,000 sf and the Hess's was just 65,000 sf. These are fairly small, considering that Sears had a 213,000 sf store at the nearby Whitehall Mall, JCPenney had a 188,000 sf store at the nearby Lehigh Valley Mall, and Hess's had a 122,000 sf store at the nearby Palmer Park Mall). Crown American stated at the time that it was working on diversifying the tenant mix. These concerns among mall merchants and shoppers appear to have faded in due time, and the mall continued to be successful in the years to follow. Since the Phillipsburg Mall was more than a decade newer than every competing mall in the Lehigh Valley, it was a popular hangout throughout the 90s.
Kay Jewelers was the last jewelry store still doing business in the Phillipsburg Mall. Though no exact date is available, it seems to have closed around January 2019. The poster in the display window advertises the Kay Jewelers in the nearby Palmer Park Mall, though that location has also closed as of March 2019.
Interestingly, Crown American sort of shot itself in the foot by opening this mall. The nearest competing enclosed mall was just a few miles across the state line in Easton, Pennsylvania, where Crown American owned the Palmer Park Mall as part of a partnership with the Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust. The Palmer Park Mall was not only much smaller than the Phillipsburg Mall (about 350,000 leasable square feet at the time compared to Phillipsburg's 577,000) but it was also far older. The Palmer Park Mall opened in 1973, and had the decor to prove it. Come the 90's, this was no longer in fashion. The Palmer Park Mall had a well-documented decline through the 90's which coincides with the opening of the Phillipsburg Mall so close by. It wasn't until the turn of the century that the Palmer Park Mall really got back on its feet. Though there was another area mall that was not so lucky: the old-school open-air Hillcrest Mall in Phillipsburg was driven out of business by the Phillipsburg Mall. Today, it is known as the Hillcrest Professional Plaza and is home to mostly medical offices.
Crown American became a publicly traded company in 1993, exposing the major shopping mall owner to greater scrutiny. To investors, the Hess's department store chain was a liability. Its stores had weak sales figures compared to prominent competitors, and investors saw the chain as an albatross weighing down Crown's mall portfolio. Under pressure, Crown American CEO Frank Pasquerilla looked for a buyer for the Hess's chain, which by then had been reduced to 30 stores, primarily in Pennsylvania. Unable to find a buyer to take the whole company, Pasquerilla agreed to break up the chain and sell it to two entities. The May Department Stores Company agreed to buy 10 Hess's locations. These stores closed in 1994 and were rebuilt to the May Company's standards before re-opening as one of several department store brands owned by May, including Pittsburgh-based Kauffmann's and Baltimore-based Hecht's. The Hess's trademarks and the remaining 20 stores were to be bought by a competing Pennsylvania department store: The Bon-Ton Stores, Inc. of York PA. These stores, including the one at the Phillipsburg Mall, retained the Hess's name into 1995 before smoothly transitioning to the Bon-Ton name.
The mirrored interior facade is a classic Hess's look from the later model stores. Bon-Ton typically did very little to alter the appearance of the stores it had acquired over the years, including the Hess's stores.
One factor that worked against the Phillipsburg Mall was the offshoring of the Ingersoll-Rand Corporation, which had been Phillipsburg's largest employer and taxpayer for almost a century. Ingersoll-Rand declined from employing 5,000 people in the 50's down to just 500 by 2000, when the remainder of the jobs were laid off. Ingersoll-Rand has been based in Ireland, a tax haven, ever since, and it left Phillipsburg, its hometown of 97 years, with zero jobs, zero tax dollars, and 380 acres of polluted, contaminated, vacant land. Phillipsburg's population declined along with the Ingersoll-Rand jobs.
Kohl's replaced Kmart as an anchor to the mall after Kmart closed that location as part of their 2002 bankruptcy proceedings. It was also around this time that the mall's 15-unit food court, called the Garden Grove, was removed entirely in favor of a 25,500 square foot H&M fast-fashion retailer. In 2003, Crown American, the company that built and owned the mall, agreed to be acquired by the Philadelphia-based Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust (PREIT). The robust portfolio of Crown American malls, including Phillipsburg Mall, came under PREIT's ownership. At the time of the merger, the Phillipsburg Mall had a reported 78.9% inline occupancy and $309 in sales per square foot of leasable space. For a while, it was business as usual. But as retailing continued to change with the onset of the Great Recession and the ever-increasing prevalence of online shopping, PREIT had to rethink its strategy. Crown American malls had largely been built in rural markets. Many of these markets were experiencing disproportionate economic hardship and population decline. In 2012, PREIT unveiled a new business model: they would begin selling off their less profitable malls in order to raise capital that could then be reinvested in the company's most high-performing properties. Over the next few years, PREIT would unload a significant number of properties to various new owners - and one of the first to go was the Phillipsburg Mall. At the time, 1/3 of the mall's inline stores were vacant, though all four anchors were still in business. In PREIT's final quarterly report in 2012, the Phillipsburg Mall had some of the weakest sales in PREIT's portfolio. Ringing up just $229 in sales per square foot - a steep decline from the $309/sf it had at the point of the PREIT takeover. This meant that the mall ranked 36th out PREIT's 38 malls by that metric. The mall was sold in January of 2013 for the bargain price of $11.5 million to a joint venture by Namdar Realty Group and Mason Asset Management.
Kohl's replaced Kmart as an anchor at the Phillipsburg Mall shortly after Kmart closed this store during its 2002 bankruptcy. Kohl's had passed up the opportunity to open at the nearby Palmer Park Mall a few years earlier - ultimately betting on the losing horse.
Namdar Realty and Mason Asset Management jointly own dozens of malls in the United States and have a well-deserved reputation as deadbeat landlords. If a shopping mall is to be a success in the modern age, it requires financial support for constant upgrades, renovations, and promotions. Namdar/Mason, on the other hand, profit off of their malls with a low-investment strategy that involves slashing operating expenses (read: cutting jobs and maintenance) and refusing to make funds available for improvements to their properties. This often ushers the malls in their portfolio into the grave. For a few years after buying the mall, Namdar/Mason split the property up and sold pieces of it - selling the land occupied by Kohl's and the several restaurants located on the mall parking lot to various owners. This move helped Namdar/Mason raise $7.9 million - just $3.6 million shy of what they'd paid for the whole mall to begin with. Profits were good for Namdar/Mason, but the mall itself paid the price.
The Phillipsburg Mall maintenance truck sits on four flats and no hatch in the back. No doubt the owners of the mall laid off the maintenance worker(s) who once used it.
Shortly after the ownership change, JCPenney indicated that their store at the Phillipsburg Mall would close in 2014. It would be replaced on New Year's Day, 2017, with Black Rose Antiques and Collectibles. The only substantial improvement made by Namdar/Mason was the combination of a series of small storefronts to accommodate a Gold's Gym within the mall. In 2015, the mall was appraised with a fair market value of $17.8 million. Two years later, that figure dropped to $11 million. And things have only gotten worse since then.
Black Rose Antiques & Collectibles occupied the former JCPenney space at the Phillipsburg Mall. Interestingly, this Black Rose was originally located at the South Mall in Allentown, but jumped ship to the Phillipsburg Mall. The doors are ordinarily open, but this photo was taken after it closed for the day.
In late 2017, Sears Holdings announced that the Sears store at the Phillipsburg Mall would close. The store shut its doors for good in January of 2018. That same month, The Bon-Ton Stores, Inc. filed for bankruptcy protection with a plan to close 42 stores nationwide and seek to restructure the company. One of those 42 stores set to close in April was the store at the Phillipsburg Mall. Sears had been paying $250,000 per year in rent, while Bon-Ton had been paying $180,000 per year in rent. This wasn't just revenue lost: it left the mall suddenly with only 2/4 anchors (and Black Rose isn't the strongest anchor tenant to begin with). This preceded the departure of many more tenants. Old Navy left the mall to relocate to a nearby strip mall in September of 2018, and the H&M that had replaced the entire mall food court so many years ago called it quits in January of 2019. H&M had been paying a monstrous $699,000 per year to the mall owners in rent for the space. The former Sears building became a problem in August 2018 when its roof caved in under heavy rain. The roof was never repaired. When I was at the mall in June, I noticed that the mall management had stuffed loose insulation under the shutter door to try and keep the AC in. I can't fault the management for trying to work with the hand they were dealt - but it's unacceptable that the mall owners would allow the property to exist in such a state with no action taken.
Sears had been the mall's largest anchor tenant, and had been at the mall since it opened in 1989. It closed at the beginning of 2018 - the first of many significant departures over the 12 months to follow. Ever since the roof caved in, a barricade of mall benches keeps mall patrons out of the former Sears wing
"SEARS" labelscar
Bon-Ton closed this store and 41 others during its bankruptcy filing. Though Bon-Ton had hoped to save more than 200 of its remaining department stores, the company was ultimately bought out of bankruptcy by liquidators who shut down the whole company.
H&M replaced the mall's food court in the early 2000's. Today, neither H&M nor any food service tenants are doing business inside the mall.
H&M interior
Some of what remained of the mall's major retailers joined H&M in leaving the mall at the start of 2019, as Victoria's Secret and Hallmark pulled out. By this point, the mall was clearly beyond saving, and the mall owners had confirmed that they had determined that the future of the site would be "something other than a mall". The Namdar Realty website claims that the center is currently being de-malled. The first step in that process has already been completed with the demolition of the former Sears beginning in August 2019, after the structurally compromised building had sat with no repairs for a whole year. I visited twice: once in June 2019 and again in September 2019. Below you can find more pictures of my findings from when I was there.
**UPDATE: 9/27/19**
News just broke today with additional information. Firstly: the owners of the mall have reported a lifetime profit of $15.1 million on the property. Believe it or not, for Namdar Realty and Mason Asset Management, the Phillipsburg Mall is a success story that worked out exactly how they would have hoped. Despite overseeing the total decline of the mall during their 6-year ownership, their strategy of bleeding the property dry made them millions of dollars. Secondly, crews are now preparing to demolish the vacant Bon-Ton department store, and leases in the mall are currently being done on month-long terms - this is a sign that the mall owners anticipate closing the mall within the foreseeable future. The month-long lease agreements will allow the ownership to evict the remaining tenants all at once, with very little notice, as soon as they're ready to demolish the rest of the mall. Then they can sell the valuable land that the mall sits on to add a few more million dollars onto their lifetime profits for this property.
**UPDATE: 10/2/19**
Local news has now reported that this past Monday, September 30th, Gold's Gym closed its doors for good, apparently opting not to renew their monthly lease. The owner of the Gold's Gym franchise at the Phillipsburg Mall, Ron Noonan, has been vocal in his condemnation of the mall ownership in recent news interviews leading up to the closure, which was announced with only one day's notice. Noonan said that he wished he had the money to move out and start over again in a better location, just as Old Navy did one year ago - but that simply was not economically possible. A scathing letter was left at the doors of the shuttered Gold's Gym, reading:
"We would like to thank all members and employees for years of patronage and loyalty.
For the past 5 years we have tried our best to provide an outstanding product through our staff, our customer service, equipment and the cleanliness of the facility. As many have seen through the past 5 years we have tried to do everything we can to be successful inside the mall but the landlord has done just about everything he can to make sure that does not happen. Now with the state of the mall in total disrepair, with it being torn down around us, many people in the community thinking the mall is closed already or even would like to see it torn down really is making it impossible to do any type of business and we can no longer keep operating under these conditions.”
A post on Monday from the gym's facebook page would add that "The reason Gold’s Gym Phillipsburg closed their doors is because the gym is out of money and has been for a long time. I have carried the gym personally, losing money every month. I apologize I can no longer keep carrying this gym and I can’t keep having people working for us if I cannot pay them."
Gold's had opened in the mall around 2014, occupying 19,000 square feet of space that had previously been several inline store spaces that were combined to accommodate the gym. Now that it is closed, employees will be paid their final checks and gym members will be refunded for their remaining membership time. Gold's Gym Phillipsburg members were also invited to use the Gold's Gym facility 25 miles away in Hackettstown, New Jersey - also owned by Noonan - free of charge for the rest of the year.
This of course has very severe ramifications for the Phillipsburg Mall. Gold's was a major mall tenant - the last major mall tenant in the interior - and was probably paying significant rent. The Phillipsburg Mall has already begun to lose money, and the closure of Gold's will only give mall ownership that much more incentive to tear down what's left of the mall and sell the land before it becomes too much of a nuisance. I would not be surprised if the mall owners decided not to renew any leases at the end of October, effectively evicting the few remaining shops and clearing the way for demolition of the remaining property.
**UPDATE: 7/14/20**
This update has been well overdue, but the Phillipsburg Mall has officially closed for good. In the waning days of December, 2019, the mall owners served most tenants with 30-day eviction notices. At least one tenant - a small business simply called Sports Collectibles - commented on how terrible it was to be given that ultimatum just a day after Christmas. A handful of tenants were allowed to remain for more than 30 days, either because they were granted an extension or because their lease agreements lasted for a few more months. Even Black Rose Antiques announced that they'd be shutting down operations sometime in March. Once the month of March came around, the Covid-19 pandemic forced shopping malls around the United States to close. At the time that the Phillipsburg Mall closed for the pandemic, only Kohl's, Black Rose, Bath & Body Works, and Sports Collectibles were still operating in the mall structure. After closing, the Phillipsburg Mall Facebook page advertised mall benches planters, and other random fixtures were for sale. On June 28th, 2020, shopping malls in the state of New Jersey were permitted to reopen, but the Phillipsburg Mall remained sealed. This confirmed what most people had known deep down - the Phillipsburg Mall was no more.
Gym members were greeted with locked doors on Monday, September 30th, 2019. This was Phillipsburg Mall's last major tenant, not including anchors Kohl's and Black Rose Antiques. The owners of Phillipsburg Mall subdivided the mall property and sold the Kohl's anchor in 2017 for $2.4 million. This helped the mall owners raise quick cash, but it also means Kohl's isn't paying rent to the mall anymore. Black Rose, meanwhile, is still part of mall property, but as an antiques dealer there's no way it's paying as much in rent as a traditional mall retailer would have.
The trademark blue neon lights around the skylights are one of the most iconic Phillipsburg Mall features.
When I visited in June, the mall was actually REALLY dark. A lot of the lights were turned off that day. The mall is laid out in a mostly linear fashion, with a straight hallway leading from Kohl's to Sears. This picture is from a T-shaped junction where the short hall leading to Bon-Ton sprouted off of the main hallway.
Thankfully, the place was much brighter when I returned in September. In this shot, I'm facing in the direction of Sears. On my left is Gold's Gym.
This picture was taken from the Kohl's court, facing down the hallway towards the center of the mall. The vacant storefronts you see on both sides of the hall here have likely been vacant ever since PREIT owned the mall, as you can see that greater care had gone towards making these empty stores look less unsightly.
Another shot down the barren hallway. That large storefront on the right (starting where the T-Rex skeleton is) was The Gap a long time ago.
Of course I had to get a shot of the horror faces made infamous by This is Dan Bell in his video tour of the mall. This decor comes from when the restaurant was Caffe Europa, a Mediterranean place. For those who are interested, the Laurel Mall in Hazelton, Pennsylvania still has an active Caffe Europa, complete with the same terrifying decor.
This style of logo was common in Crown American malls. If you look at the logo for the Nittany Mall in State College PA, for example, it is the exact same thing.
Deb shops were a common sight in malls, and all locations closed in 2015. Because of this, untouched Deb storefronts like this one are a treasure that you can find in just about any dead mall.
I thought this was a strange sight. Whatever store was once here has been covered in plaster and unsuccessfully hidden behind a bench, so clearly they don't plan on leasing that space ever again. So I'm not entirely sure why they put a leasing sign up there.
The Love Machine took my quarter and didn't even tell me how good a lover I am :(
The Shoe Dept. left a nasty labelscar when it left the mall.
GameStop has been losing money by the fistful recently, and yet they still have this store open in the Phillipsburg Mall. This store used to be a Babbage's, but the mall also had an EB Games back in the day.
Victoria's Secret. There's a labelscar there, though it's a bit hard to see.
It's not everyday that you find two different storefronts bearing a Victoria's Secret labelscar in the same mall. This store was originally a Suncoast Motion Picture Company before becoming Victoria's Secret. VS later moved to the larger space in the picture above before closing in March 2019.
RadioShack is another dead mall classic. On the far left of this image you can also see the former Payless ShoeSource, which was right next to Sears.
Facing towards the Kohl's end of the mall.
People always seem to be sketched out by these mall candy dispensers. I still like to see things like this in malls - it's a nice thing to have for kids. Still, even I was taken aback when I saw a family buying their kid something from this cart. Hopefully it was a toy and not candy, because in a mall this dead and with such a shady owner, I shudder to think how old the candy is.
In front of the Kohl's, with few lights on, the noontime sun illuminated these benches in any otherwise dark court.
I love this shot of a lonesome mall plant under a badly discolored skylight.
The real anchor tenant.
GNC also inexplicably still did business here until 2020, as they seemed do in every dead mall. However, that has since changed as GNC has closed hundreds of locations in 2020. The mall-based GNC is almost extinct in the Lehigh Valley, with only one holdout remaining at the Westgate Mall.
