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. As of March 2020, the ShoppingTown Mall is no more.
== History ==
ShoppingTown opened in 1954 as one of Syracuse's first suburban open-air shopping centers. 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. 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, and was substantially remodeled in 1991. 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. In 2014, MoonBeam Capital Investments bought the mall for 13.6 million.
In 2012 a community theater, Central New York Playhouse, opened. 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. In 2015 and 2016 the mall lost three of its four anchor tenants. Macys announced its departure in March 2015. Dicks Sporting Goods moved out of the mall and down the road in October 2015. April 8, 2016 brought the departure of JCPenny. In February 2015, Moonbeam Capital Investments proposed plans to demolish the Sears wing and turn it into a strip mall. This has been halted indefinitely because of a tax dispute.
As of 2017, future plans include repurposing facilities to include office, healthcare, and education tenants.
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. The food court is also now abandoned after its last tenant, Ming Wok, closed in January 2018.
As of September 2, 2018, the mall's last anchor, Sears (originally Dey Brothers and later Addis & Dey's, then Steinbach (upper level) and TJ Maxx (lower level) before both levels became Sears after it relocated from Fayetteville Mall, now Towne Center at Fayetteville, Addis and Dey's was later relocated to what was later Kaufmann's, then Macy's), has permanently closed, leaving the mall anchorless.
== Foreclosure ==
On June 24, 2019 where Rite Aid left the property, 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 and it sure did just that as of March 2020.
Category:Malls in New York
Category:Malls in the United States
Category:Enclosed Malls
Category:Regional malls
Category:Shopping Malls
Category:Dey Brothers Locations
Category:The Addis Company Locations
Category:Former Woolworth Locations
Category:W.T. Grant Locations
Category:Kallet Locations
Category:Grand Union Locations
Category:Happy Place Locations
Category:Malls that opened in 1954
Category:Defunct
Category:Defunct malls
Category:Dead Malls
Category:Abandoned malls
Category:Shopping Centers