Trexler Mall (Trexlertown, PA)

Sometimes when looking into malls that no longer exist, you find one that never really seemed able to catch a break; sometimes you find a mall that never did better than "okay" at any point in their years or even decades of existence. The Trexler Mall was one such mall. With a combination of bad decisions and bad luck, it never quite made it. Still, it did exist for almost 30 years. Here's the story:

Or The Shoppes at Trexler, as the site is now known

The Trexler Mall was conceived of and built by the Hanover Co., a small-time mall developer that had drawn up plans to build a few other malls as well, but I'm not aware of any others that Hanover actually completed. Anchor tenants were Laneco, Grant City, and A&P. Laneco was a regional chain of what you might call proto-hypermarkets. They started off as grocery stores but later expanded into general merchandise. Many Laneco stores featured both department store and grocery store goods under one roof, but some only had one or the other; the Trexler Mall location, from what I can tell, was only a department store and didn't have a grocery section. Grant City, meanwhile, was the large-format discount store division of national dime store chain W.T. Grant. Grant City was sort of like Grant's answer to S.S. Kresge's then-popular Kmart concept. A&P was an American supermarket chain that requires little introduction. In the early 70's, it was apparently a trendy practice in commercial real estate to have enclosed shopping malls that also featured a strip mall component; accordingly, the Trexler Mall was only truly a mall in a straight line from Laneco at one end to Grant City at the other end. A strip of stores then jutted out at an irregular angle from the side of Grant City leading on down to A&P.

Aerial view of the Trexler Mall. On the left side was A&P; on the right side was Laneco; and in the middle at the elbow area was Grant City.

The Trexler Mall opened on November 1st, 1974, following close on the heels of the Palmer Park Mall and the Westgate Mall (both opening in the latter half of 1973). The Trexler Mall was to serve the nascent western suburbs of Allentown, though some commentators have noted that these suburbs had not yet developed enough by 1974 to adequately support a regional shopping mall. Upon opening, the mall had roughly half of its spaces occupied. That might sound underwhelming, but it's actually historically common for malls to open in that condition. Often times the other spaces may have prospective tenants lined up but not ready to open until months after the grand opening of the mall, and it was likely the same case at the Trexler Mall. 

Two years after opening, the Trexler Mall was in a lot of trouble. Wooden paneling covered vacant storefronts in the mall much like how drywall panels are used in the malls of today.

However, shortly after opening, the Hanover Co. that developed and owned the mall went bankrupt. By 1976, Hanover Co. had ceased to exist, and a mess of corporate entities had formed and dissolved in its wake. The courts were bogged down trying to determine who exactly even owned the Trexler Mall. Meanwhile, no new tenants could take residence in the mall for the duration of this legal question being unanswered. Making matters all the worse was the bankruptcy of the W.T. Grant Company. Grant's bankruptcy was then the 2nd largest bankruptcy filing in US history, and resulted in total liquidation of the company. Grant City going dark further hurt foot traffic to the mall and left shop owners desperate for a turnaround.

A perfectly preserved Grant City storefront at the Trexler Mall seen in 2019. The water tower behind it used to say "Trexler Mall" before being repainted around 2017. Grant City facades looked like this and a few examples have persisted since 1976 when companies like Kmart took over the stores and did little to alter the look. This particular Grant City facade remained largely undisturbed despite operating for decades as Hess's and then The Bon-Ton department stores. It has since been destroyed when Urban Air Adventure Park moved in.

In 1977, things finally began to improve. The legal issues were resolved, and the banks foreclosed upon the mall. Montgomery Development Co., which had a hand in developing several other malls in the Lehigh Valley, was appointed to manage the Trexler Mall. And Grant City was replaced by Hess's department store of Allentown. The mall was able to crawl out of financial ruin and sustain itself financially under new management.

Trexler Mall, 1985. Get a load of that mirrored skylight! Note Hess's occupying the former Grant City anchor building and RadioShack in the background.

In 1985, businesses in the mall complained about lost sales due to a weeks-long strike by Laneco workers. Particularly, businesses nearby to Laneco in the mall reported a sharp drop in foot traffic. Eventually the strike lifted and life went on. In 1988, A&P rebranded their grocery store at the mall as a SuperFresh supermarket. It was in the 90s that the mall started to really struggle again, starting in 1993 with the closure of SuperFresh. A&P cited "extremely poor sales" at the SuperFresh justifying the closure. These bad sales were attributed to competition from a new, larger Redner's Warehouse Market that had opened down the street in 1990. In 1994, Hess's department store was sold to The Bon-Ton Stores, Inc. due to Hess's having poor sales and high debts. The store was rebranded as The Bon-Ton and remained open at the Trexler Mall. In 1995, Giant Supermarkets signed a lease to redevelop the old A&P/SuperFresh and open a large Giant supermarket on the site. However, that same year Laneco shut down their store, leaving another major vacancy at the mall. That year, the Morning Call newspaper ran an article titled "Time is the Enemy for Ailing Trexler Mall" in which writer Allison Salerno opined that "actual shoppers are hard to find" in the mall. An unnamed employee at the mall stated for the press, "I've seen the demise of this mall... I've lived in the area for 20 years." The former Laneco was used for flea markets while a permanent tenant was searched for, but no such permanent tenant was found.

Under new ownership, the Trexler Mall was pushed along the path of redevlopment and de-malling.

At some point, the Trexler mall was acquired by Cedar Realty Trust, which appointed TKO Real Estate Advisory and RD Management to lease and manage the mall. Cedar and its management companies immediately began making moves to reposition the mall for alternative uses. A lease was signed with the Lehigh Valley Health Network to open a health center in the former Laneco in 1998, marking the first major deviation for the mall away from traditional retail use. Then, in 1999, mall management terminated the lease of The Bargain Cinemas to make way for a new fitness center. Speaking to the news, Ted Kraus of TKO & RD Management said of the movie theater, "they were a good tenant, especially unique with their value pricing. They were willing to stay, but they were not going to be an asset to the new center. We're going through the process of de-malling the mall." The Trexlertown Fitness Club opened in January 2000, taking over not only the old cinema but also the entire main entrance to the mall next to The Bon-Ton.

The Health Center at Trexlertown, part of the Lehigh Valley Health Network, opened in the former Laneco at the Trexler Mall. This was the beginning of the end for the mall.

If the Health Center at Trexlertown was the beginning of the end for the mall, Kohl's was the end of the end. In 2002, mall ownership petitioned for several zoning variances from the local government to redevelop what remained of the mall interior in order to let a new Kohl's department store open up in the middle of the mall in between the Health Center and the Fitness Club. Over the course of the next year, approval was gained and the mall interior was permanently closed to allow Kohl's to take over the whole space, making the transition from an enclosed mall into a strictly open-air retail center complete. And unlike the Whitehall Mall and Richland Mall, which ultimately did not prosper after being de-malled, the Trexler Mall has actually performed consistently well as a strip mall, with vacancies tending not to last very long. When Giant Supermarkets departed the Shoppes at Trexler in 2011, their store was redeveloped and is now a Marshalls / HomeGoods. When The Bon-Ton went bankrupt in 2018, their store at the Trexler Mall was among 42 stores nationwide that were set to close as Bon-Ton unsuccessfully attempted to turn the company around. After closing, the store was repurposed as an Urban Air trampoline park. It's distasteful how the mall owners went about creating the "Shoppes at Trexler," particularly by evicting tenants in good standing like the movie theater because it didn't fit their vision for the property. But ultimately, after a lifetime of hardship, maybe there was just no saving the old Trexler Mall and redevelopment was an inevitability. Either way, what's done is done now. That's a wrap for this mall; thank you for reading.

What was once a tiny A&P and later a large Giant supermarket is now a Marshalls / HomeGoods combination store.

Another angle of the former Grant City. Bon-Ton selected this store to close even before the company was doomed to go out of business entirely. I heard speculation that Bon-Ton's sales at this location suffered due to it being sandwiched in between rival department stores Kohl's and Marshalls.