Fashion Center (Paramus, New Jersey)
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The Fashion Center mall is a small shopping center located in Paramus, New Jersey. It was considered by many to be a dead mall. Over the past decade the mall has been renovated so that all of the stores are now only accessible from the exterior of the building and the mall now has near full occupancy.
The property is currently owned by Wilner Realty of Pennsylvania. It has a gross leasable area of 446,000 ft2 (41,400 m2)[1] and is considered small by modern standards, with fewer than fifteen storefronts at its peak.
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[edit] History
The mall opened on February 15, 1967 and was billed as a miniature Fifth Avenue. Hoping to capitalize on the affluent population of Bergen County, it included two anchor stores: Lord & Taylor on the north end and B. Altman and Company on the south end. The department stores were connected to each other by an indoor shopping arcade that was 1,500 feet (460 m) in length and included high-end retailers such as Rogers Peet (later replaced by Brooks Brothers), Georg Jensen, and Ann Taylor. There was also a free-standing Best & Company store in the parking lot, which was later replaced by Toys "R" Us.[2]
The Fashion Center Mall, which was designed in a contemporary style of decor, was prosperous through the 1970s. But as the years progressed, other malls in the Paramus area, including Westfield Garden State Plaza, Paramus Park, Riverside Square Mall (now known as The Shops at Riverside), and Bergen Mall (now known as Bergen Town Center) began to capture its local market share. By the 1980s, this growing competition, coupled with the demise of B. Altman, led to a severe decline in the mall's fortunes. Retailers gradually moved out, leaving Lord & Taylor as its only anchor store.
In 1996, the vacant 180,000 ft2 (17,000 m2) B. Altman space was divided up into a Bed, Bath and Beyond (first level) and a T.J. Maxx (second level). Around the same time, a Discovery Zone was also added near the center of the mall. The top level of the former B. Altman store remains vacant as of 2009.
Since 2001, the property's owners have implemented a gradual "de-malling" strategy for the Fashion Center, with the eventual goal of closing its central shopping arcade. First, the mall's Best Buy store was built without a mall entrance and eliminated Bed, Bath, and Beyond entrance's as well. In 2004, Lord & Taylor decided to eliminate their mall entrance as well. Then in late 2008, the general mall entrance next to the Applebee's restaurant was closed then renovated in 2009. This completed the Fashion Center's transition from a traditional mall into a collection of separate stores with their own entrances and no interior common space. All stores can only be accessed from the outside parking lots at this time.[3]
[edit] Recent Developments
On March 25, 2009, New York City-based grocer Fairway Market opened its first branch west of the Hudson River on the Winters Avenue side of Fashion Center mall.
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- DeadMalls.com Article
- International Council of Shopping Centers: Fashion Center
- Info on all of Paramus' malls
- Aerial View
