# Beaver Valley Mall

The Beaver Valley Mall is a regional shopping mall located in Center Township, Pennsylvania, serving Beaver County within the Pittsburgh metropolitan area. It is owned by the Namdar Realty Group. The mall features Boscov's, Dick's Sporting Goods, JCPenney, Rural King, and a U-Haul storage center. It is vastly considered by locals to be a dead mall, with many residents opting for the Ross Park Mall in Ross Township or The Mall at Robinson in Robinson Township, Pennsylvania.

## History

In 1970, the Beaver Valley Mall opened with The Joseph Horne Company, Gimbels, and Sears as the original anchors. That same year, the entire Gimbels chain was purchased by the tobacco conglomerate BATUS. In 1986, after years of declining sales, BATUS announced that Gimbels was on the block. Unable to find a buyer for the entire chain, BATUS closed down the entire Gimbels Pittsburgh division, selling or closing all locations. Some of the more attractive mall locations, such as Beaver Valley Mall, were taken over by the St. Louis based May Department Stores Company for its Pittsburgh-based Kaufmann's division. This effectively caused the shuttering of the entire Gimbels Pittsburgh division. The Beaver Valley location was closed and completely renovated before reopening as Kaufmann's. After the move to the mall, the original Kaufmann's location in nearby Rochester was subdivided into a Giant Eagle and a Kmart. In 2006, when The May Department Stores Company was purchased by Cincinnati based Federated Department Stores, this location transitioned to Macy's.
The Joseph Horne Company (owned by the New York City based Associated Dry Goods Corporation) operated in the Beaver Valley Mall until 1995. In October 1986, The May Department Stores Company merged with Associated Dry Goods Corporation. May promptly sold The Joseph Horne Company to a group of local investors. In 1995, Federated Department Stores acquired Horne's and renamed all former locations under its own Lazarus regional nameplate. In 1998, after operating a few years as Lazarus, Federated closed several locations including the Beaver Valley Mall store. This location was then acquired by and reopened as Boscov's.
JCPenney became the fourth anchor in 1998, with the new location being built right in front of the food court. JCPenney had relocated from the Northern Lights Shopping Center in nearby Economy. Dick's Sporting Goods became the fifth anchor in 2007. The store was built in between JCPenney and Boscov's.
The later 2010's saw several storied traditional department store retailers update their brick-and-mortar formats after being encroached upon to a degree by several digital retailers in recent years.
In June 2016, It was announced Sears would shutter as part of an ongoing decision to phase out of their traditional brick-and-mortar format.
In 2017, it was announced that Rural King would begin transforming the previous Sears outpost and open sometime during the next spring. On March 25, 2018, Rural King held a grand opening for its Beaver Valley Mall store.
In 2017, Macy's, which also retains several much larger outposts nearby, announced that after a strategy had been elected by them to solely focus on their highest achieving outposts that they have selected against staying on at this regional shopping center as well.
In 2018, it was announced that the previous Macy's outpost will be reconstructed into a new development called The Shops at Beaver Valley Mall, which was set to include additional retail, restaurants, as well as additional space for office, medical or other services by 2020. This development was postponed by the COVID-19 pandemic, instead it was converted into a Uhaul self storage and the opening of a Firehouse Subs.

## Current Anchors

* Boscov's (Former Lazarus/Joseph Horne Company)
* Dick's Sporting Goods
* JCPenney
* Rural King (Former Sears)

## Chi-Chi's hepatitis A outbreak

Beaver Valley Mall was the scene of the largest hepatitis A outbreak in U.S. history when 660 people contracted the virus and four people died after eating at the Chi-Chi's Mexican restaurant during the months of October and November in 2003. After a long investigation, it was discovered that scallions imported from Mexico were the cause of the outbreak. The outbreak did not affect restaurants that were not connected to the main mall, but did affect the food court tenants for a period of time as well as putting all of Chi-Chi's locations out of business.