Richland Mall (Quakertown, Pennsylvania)

The Richland Mall, named for the Richland Township in which it is built (just outside of Quakertown), was a small community shopping mall in northern Bucks County. To my knowledge, it was also the first enclosed shopping mall in the Lehigh Valley area to fail (Assuming you don't count the Whitehall Mall, which was largely demolished first but a portion of it still exists today). At the time of this writing, the Richland Mall has been totally de-malled for the past 19 years. Continue reading for an interesting journey through the history of the mall, as well as the modern big-box shopping center that replaced it, complete with pictures that capture the essence of the decades-lost mall.

The Richland Plaza stands where the mall once stood. Like the mall that came before it, the Richland Plaza can largely be described as a failure about two decades after opening. Half of the businesses advertised on the pylon sign are closed. 

News photo shows work being done inside the Richland Mall just prior to opening. Rea & Derick Drugs was a major drugstore chain with locations in most Lehigh valley area malls in the 70s. CVS eventually bought Rea & Derick out.

The Richland Mall was built in 1976, during the 1970's mall craze in the Lehigh Valley that also brought us the Carbon Plaza Mall (1971), Palmer Park Mall (1973), Westgate Mall (1973), Trexler Mall (1974), South Mall (1975), Lehigh Valley Mall (1976), and Stroud Mall (1978). Like several other area malls, a major driving force behind the construction of the Richland Mall was the Hess's department store chain, which was looking to expand and wanted to build malls to accompany their new suburban Hess's stores. The Richland Mall was co-developed by Hess's and the Montgomery Development Co. In addition to Hess's, the mall was anchored by a small (about 26,000 square feet) Clemens food market, a local-to-Philadelphia family-owned grocery store chain. The Hess's store was also unusually small for Hess's stores built in that era, clocking in at just 84,000 square feet compared to over 100,000 square feet at other such early Hess's locations. It also lacked a freestanding auto center, which was also out of the ordinary. The mall interior was 70,000 square feet and contained 35 inline shops. It opened to the public on April 29th, 1976.

The Hess's at Richland Mall had the trademark look of all of Hess's suburban stores while it was still a locally-owned company; the tri-fold entrance and vertical cobblestone-paneled walls were unmistakable early Hess's design elements. This location never got an exterior renovation from The Bon-Ton after that chain acquired most of the remaining Hess's stores in 1994. By mid-2019 (when this picture was taken) the store was pretty overgrown, and you couldn't even clearly read the sign.

Interior of former Hess's/Bon-Ton (left)

Interior of former Hess's/Bon-Ton (right)

However, like other small community malls in the area, the Richland Mall eventually found itself declining in relevance. The mall's owner at the time (The Rubin Organization of Philadelphia) did its best to keep customers coming; the mall received a renovation in 1990, and management tried to keep public interest in the mall by hosting frequent antique car shoes, sports memorabilia shows, talent shows, and other events. It may have worked for a time, but as competition increased along route 309, where the mall was located, vacancies began to persist. By 1995, 8 of the 35 inline stores were vacant at the mall, which roughly equals 25% vacancy. And things only continued to get worse from there. Perhaps the point of no return was marked by the construction of Richland Crossings just down the road. Already in planning by 1995, Richland Crossings was to be a 270,000 square foot power center featuring Walmart and a new ACME supermarket. After about two years of contentious public hearings and threats of litigation, Richland Crossings was approved for construction in August 1996. Just a few months later, in November that same year, Clemens ditched the Richland Mall and its tiny, aging store that anchored it; Clemens moved up the road to the Quakertown Plaza to build an expanded store, perhaps out of desperation to be able to compete with the brand new ACME.

The following year, the mall made a deal to replace the Clemens anchor. Redner's Warehouse Market was interested in opening one of their discount supermarkets at the former Clemens site. The plan called for a massive expansion that would more than double the size of the old 26,000 square foot Clemens to accommodate a 55,000 square foot Redner's. Much of that expansion involved Redner's swallowing up a large portion of the mall interior, including one of the main mall entrances. Eight stores inside the mall had to be relocated in order to vacate the space that Redner's was to take over. Two of those tenants - RadioShack and CVS Pharmacy - were relocated to spaces that only had exterior entrances, and thus could no longer be accessed from inside the mall.

RadioShack exterior - the sign still hung on the store when I visited in 2019. The addition of Redner's and the movement of RadioShack and CVS to strictly exterior-facing storefronts was the first major step in de-malling the Richland Mall.

RadioShack interior

Mall occupancy plummeted from this point on, and the mall was sold in January 1999 to Richland Associates, who began the process of totally de-malling the remainder of the mall. In January of 2000, the Foot Locker moved out of the mall, leaving only Pearle Vision - an original mall tenant - as the sole remaining store accessed from the mall interior. In May of 2000, plans were revealed to shut down the mall interior so that it could be repurposed to accommodate a 32,000 square foot Ollie's Bargain Outlet and a 15,000 square foot Just Cabinets - Furniture and More. In addition to this move, a new structure was to be built in the mall parking lot to allow 3 smaller businesses (including the displaced Pearle Vision) to operate. With this, the transformation of the Richland Mall into the Richland Plaza was complete.

Inside Ollie's, the old Richland Mall is still alive. In the floors you can see brickwork that marked the corridors and courts of the original mall, and in the ceiling you can see a large series of skylights that once illuminated the mall.

Richland Mall skylights

Richland Mall skylights - note that a few of the light bulbs are still working!

Brick flooring betrays the general layout of the mall from before Ollie's moved in.

But the more prosperous future promised for the property was not realized. Once the new freestanding building was constructed in the Richland Plaza's parking lot, Pearle Vision set up shop in there alongside Subway and Papa John's pizza. But neither of those eateries could make a profit at the Plaza, and both have closed up shop, never having been replaced since. CVS Pharmacy shut down their store in the main building next to Redner's as well, and we all know how it ended for RadioShack. Finally in 2018, two major property tenants went bankrupt and out of business: The Bon-Ton and Just Cabinets.

In this picture you can see the newer freestanding building in the foreground that was built to accommodate Pearle Vision and other small shops when the mall interior was closed. Pearle Vision, an original tenant of the mall, still does business. However the other two units have sat vacant since Papa John's and Subway closed.

Just Cabinets and RadioShack are both out of business, but their signs remained.

Interior of Just Cabinets - Furniture and More. Am I the only one who is annoyed by the name of that store? It's a contradiction. The store's called "Just Cabinets" but they actually sell all kinds of furniture "and more". Frankly they deserved to go under.

Which brings us to today. The dead mall of yesterday becomes the dead power center of today. Perhaps the lesson to be learned here is that route 309 near Quakertown was seriously over-developed with retail in the decades since the tiny Richland Mall was built. For example, the ACME supermarket that opened with the Walmart ended up closing after just a few years - probably because this one stretch of road doesn't need 3 or more supermarkets on it, but they went ahead and built them all anyway. The Richland Plaza is perfectly serviceable real estate for retail, but there's just no demand for more big box retail space in that area. I'm sure that the plaza will catch a lucky break and get a gym or something like that to take over a big chunk of space sooner or later, and I suspect Redner's and Ollie's are there to stay. Given that, the property will likely continue to limp along as a half-living curiosity on the side of the road for the foreseeable future. If you're ever travelling on route 309 or live near Quakertown, I definitely recommend taking a trip to the Richland Plaza to see the remnants of the mall in the Ollie's. Thank you for reading!

**UPDATE - 2022**

Redner's Warehouse Market announced in 2022 that they will be closing their Quakertown-area location. This will leave the Richland Plaza with just Ollie's as a major tenant, casting further doubt on the center's future.