The Plymouth Meeting Mall is a 952,200 square feet (88,460Â m2) shopping mall in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, approximately 15 miles (24Â km) northwest of Center City, Philadelphia. It is located at Germantown Pike and Hickory Road, near the Mid-County Interchange where the Pennsylvania Turnpike (I-276) crosses the Northeast Extension/Blue Route (I-476). The mall was built by The Rouse Company in 1966. The mall features a fountain and a carousel.
Plymouth Meeting Mall currently contains more than 100 specialty stores and restaurants, including a central Food Court, and outlying restaurants California Pizza Kitchen, P.F. Chang's China Bistro, Redstone American Grill, Benihana, Bertucci's, and King Buffet. Its original anchor stores Strawbridge & Clothier and Lit Brothers are now occupied by Macy's and Boscov's. The Boscov's site was once home to one of the largest branches of Hess's. There is also a 48,000 square feet (4,500Â m2) AMC Theatre on the property, featuring 12 screens and stadium seating. The Plymouth Meeting Mall was one of the very first malls in North America which, among its mixture of various stores, offered a church within the mall. The mall is owned and managed by PREIT (the Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust).
The mall is recognizable from a considerable distance away due to an adjoining nine-story office tower, One Plymouth Meeting. The tower, containing 167,748 square feet (15,584.3Â m2) of office space, is managed by Mack-Cali Realty Corporation.
History
The Plymouth Meeting Mall was built by The Rouse Company in 1966, it was the third fully enclosed shopping mall in the Philadelphia area. The original anchor stores Strawbridge & Clothier and Lit Brothers. The One Plymouth Meeting office tower was added on an outparcel in 1969. The mall suffered a major fire on January 10, 1970 at the east end (near Lit Brothers): "Approximately one third of the 100 stores in the suburban Philadelphia mall were damaged by either smoke, water or the fire." Lit Brothers closed in 1976 and was replaced by Hess's in 1979. The Hess's, which was the only location in the Philadelphia area, saw poor sales and closed in March 1993 as part of the restructuring of the chain. The former Hess's became Boscov's on October 13, 1996. In 2003, The Rouse Company sold the Plymouth Meeting Mall along with the Cherry Hill Mall, Echelon Mall, Exton Square Mall, Moorestown Mall, and The Gallery at Market East to PREIT for $548 million. In 2005, Federated Department Stores purchased May Department Stores, the owners of Strawbridge's, and converted several Strawbridge's locations to Macy's, including the store at Plymouth Meeting Mall. Strawbridge's became Macy's in 2006.
A redevelopment of over $100 million in 2008-2009 added new restaurants and an open-air "Lifestyle" wing featuring LOFT, Coldwater Creek (now closed), Jos. A. Bank, Chico's and Olly Shoes which opened in 2009 and early 2010. A 65,000-square-foot (6,000Â m2) Whole Foods upscale grocery market was included in the redevelopment and anchors the "Outdoor Lifestyle Wing" of the property, which also includes an underground parking area. Previously, this location gained fame in 1985 when Swedish furniture company IKEA purchased and renovated an outparcel space for its first U.S. location. IKEA later moved in the early 2000s to its current site at 400 Alan Wood Road, off of the "Blue Route" in nearby Conshohocken; the IKEA building was later demolished to make way for the Outdoor Lifestyle Wing. In recent years the interior of the Plymouth Meeting Mall has seen an increase in vacancies, with sales of $320 per square foot in the three months ending September 2015.
In 2015, it was announced that a 33,000-square-foot (3,100Â m2) Legoland Discovery Center would be constructed at the Plymouth Meeting Mall, replacing a portion of the food court. Construction began in the summer of 2016 with a planned opening in 2017. On January 4, 2017, it was announced that Macy's would be closing in spring 2017 as part of a plan to close 68 stores nationwide.
References
External links
- Plymouth Meeting Mall Web Site.
