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Mall customers mingle during an afternoon lunch at the Bistro at Cherry Hill. (Kenny Cooper/WHYY)
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This winter, the King of Prussia Mall (KOP) is unveiling CAMP, an experiential space that will host parties, immersive shows and craft workshops targeting children and families.
KOP is one of the largest malls in the country, but like its contemporaries, it is searching high and low to keep shoppers engaged.
Once meant to be a calming place to shop and find community, shopping malls have become a costly battleground in the fight for consumer attention — and the stakes are high. A loss means extinction. A win guarantees another tomorrow where the mall must adapt again.
“The fun thing about mall-watching today is that malls are trying a lot of different things and I’d say the two biggest categories of mall strategies within the footprint of the existing mall are going for greater food businesses and going for greater entertainment — because those are two things that you can’t get online,” design critic Alexandra Lange said.
Todd Putt, director of marketing for KOP, said the nature of the business is change.
“Having opened in 1963 through multiple redevelopments and expansions, we’ve really sort of set the bar because we’ve reinvested and continued to try and keep everything current and keep bringing shoppers what they’re looking for,” Putt said. “That’s really helped position us above some of the competition.”
So far, its endeavors have been objectively successful.
The mall is also bringing Netflix House to the ruins of the old Lord & Taylor. The 100,000-square-foot project is expected to open in 2025. Netflix promises it to be an “immersive experience.”
Putt said Netflix and CAMP Philadelphia will double down on turning the mall into an experience.
“The nature of shopping has changed in recent years, but what we see, and we’re continually finding is that the quote-unquote threat that people found in e-commerce was far overstated, and shoppers really want connection,” Putt said.
Malls are categorized by tiers determined by their sales per square foot. Class A malls represent the highest echelon followed by Class B and Class C. In the greater Philadelphia region, King of Prussia Mall and Cherry Hill Mall would be considered A-tier.
The foot traffic that keeps the lights on at A-tier malls attracts higher-profile tenants, allowing the malls to maintain their status among the lesser competition.
A trip to the Cherry Hill Mall in New Jersey on a random summer weekday is nearly identical to how it once was in its heyday. Teens still weave in and out of trendy clothing stores. Couples still drop by for lunch. Families still sit alongside the iconic water fountains.
“There’s a vibrancy to the mall,” said Mario Ventresca, CFO of Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust (PREIT). “There’s a feeling of community associated with the mall and I think you can see it right here.”
PREIT owns 17 mall properties across nine states. Cherry Hill is PREIT’s “crown jewel” but it’s also an outlier.
The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November 2020 and again in December 2023. PREIT exited proceedings in April.
“The past year has been one of renewed focus on the future of our business,” Ventresca said. “We have new leadership. We have new ownership — both of which are committed to reinvesting in our properties and improving our portfolio.”
The Cherry Hill Mall opened in 1961. It was the first one built east of the Mississippi River — and at the time, the largest in the country.
PREIT acquired the property in 2003. The company invested heavily in expanding the physical footprint of the mall.
“Cherry Hill has always been the showpiece in South Jersey in terms of asset quality, tenant quality,” he said. “Our customers here — it’s a strong demographic. It’s a fashion-forward demographic.”
PREIT brought Nordstrom to the Cherry Hill Mall in 2009. The endeavor was a resource-intensive swing to bring a higher-end department store to the property. To facilitate the addition, PREIT had to purchase Strawbridge’s old retail space.
The investment has largely paid off. Cherry Hill is arguably the premier shopping mall, with a plethora of fine dining experiences.
“One of the elements here that we pride ourselves in is the restaurant row,” Ventresca said. “We worked hard to bring that to the asset.”
However, the path to retail relevancy is expensive.
“The mall business is a capital-intensive business,” Ventresca said.
The common thread that ties each of its malls together is how they must adapt, introduce new concepts — and spend more money to keep consumers interested.
“Foot traffic is what it’s all about,” he said. Something about the idea of a crowded mall lights a fire in his eyes. “It’s part of our culture. It’s our main street. It’s our downtown,” Ventresca said.
An amusement park is a tough act to follow. Yet, developers erected the Willow Grove Park Mall on its grave back in 1982.
“I think the 90s are really ‘peak mall,’” Lange said. “It was a time of great economic expansion in the U.S. People were building new suburbs. People who were building new malls to serve those suburbs.”
The mall became the backdrop of many iconic movies and television shows. It supported many small businesses and provided a generation of young people with their first jobs.
Ventresca, a Blue Bell native, spent his youth at the Plymouth Meeting Mall in the 1980s. But Willow Grove was different.
“Willow Grove actually has a special place in my heart,” Ventresca said. “My parents met on the site of the former amusement park that was subsequently turned into the Willow Grove Park Mall.”
Carl Woodin, of Maple Glen, has traveled around the globe to 91 countries across all seven continents, and wherever he goes, he likes to hang out at the local mall.
Like Ventresca, he too has fond memories of Willow Grove. Woodin can vividly remember shopping there with his wife and children — making pit stops at the WHYY Store of Knowledge, eating a messy meal from Taco Bell in the food court and the calming flow of water from the fountains. He can picture himself there.
“It was just such a warm homey feeling. The smells from the various food places, whether it was the cinnamon buns or the soft pretzels or the pizza or the coffee. It was a warm hub to your senses,” Woodin said.
Things have changed.
“Now, it’s like a ghost town,” Woodin said. “It’s like a city after a war — no damage, but hardly anything open. It’s like a mouth with missing teeth.”
The Willow Grove Park Mall is not dead. The mall boasts a tenant occupancy rate north of 96%. By comparison, the Exton Square Mall, another PREIT property, has an occupancy rate that hovers around 60%. PREIT has designated Exton Square Mall as “non-core.” The company is in the process of selling that struggling property to Elkins Park-based Abrams Realty & Development.
Meanwhile, PREIT is still trying new ways to improve Willow Grove. Tilted 10, an indoor entertainment center, arrived at the mall in 2023. There’s laser tag, bowling and even minigolf, all of the new experiences malls are banking on to lure in new customers.
However, there’s some credence to Woodin’s observations. Some things have changed. Willow Grove’s iconic fountain is gone. Many of the old anchors have bid farewell. Some of the lights are often switched off. The community fashion shows are no more.
Ventresca declined to comment on Willow Grove’s fiscal health. He called it a “good property.”
Woodin feels a sense of sadness and nostalgia for how it used to be. The restaurants with outward-facing entrances might get his money, but he has a hard time setting foot inside the mall itself.
“I don’t see myself going to Willow Grove Mall at any time in the near future unless it drastically changes,” Woodin said. “Yeah, I’ve been to the Cheesecake Factory — but like I never even walked in or out of the mall.”
If someone closes their eyes and lists the defining features of the quintessential mall, the fountain would likely be near the top of the list. It is what inspired the namesake of Lange’s book, “Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall.”
KOP still has its fountain.
“It’s an amenity for our guests to sit and relax,” Putt said. “It’s a peaceful sound, it’s enjoyable to watch if you’re just sitting there dazing out or just relaxing. It just provides just that little bit of something to add to the environment and hopefully further appeal to some of our shoppers and make them more comfortable.”
The Cherry Hill Mall still has its fountains. However, Ventresca declined to answer why PREIT stripped Willow Grove Park of its iconic fountain.
“I think removing the fountains is a sign of not caring,” Lange said. “It’s not about the fountain per se, it’s about the fountain as something that needs daily maintenance that is pleasant for free, that is a place that you can meet at the mall.”
These days, Woodin finds himself at the Promenade at Upper Dublin. The 25-acre mixed-use complex is the modern-day successor to the outdoor shopping center.
It blends 128,000 square feet of retail space with 400 apartment units to compel nearby residents to spend their dollars.
“This reminds me of a European town,” Woodin said.
Lifestyle centers such as the Promenade at Upper Dublin are a growing share of the retail space. BET Investments, which operates numerous Promenade-style properties across the country, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The Promenade at Upper Dublin opened in 2020.
In some cases, lifestyle centers spring up from the graves of dead malls — a second chance for cultural relevance. The Promenade at Granite Run, which opened in 2018, is one such example.
Barbara Kahn, professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, said these types of centers can be more effective than the average mall.
“It tends to be closer and there’s parking right up to the door,” Kahn said. “So one of the things that we also seeing in some of these regional malls was the configuration or reconfiguration of their space.”
She said if you want to see the future of malls, you really have to look at it from the consumer’s perspective.
“There has to be something in the mall that makes it worth your while,” Kahn said.
If Woodin has the itch to go to the mall, he’d rather spend an extra 15 minutes driving to the King of Prussia Mall. He said the retail giant has “anything you need” and is worth paying the tolls on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
But there’s still something missing.
“The Willow Grove Mall was the home mall, and the King of Prussia Mall was the mall with stores,” Woodin said. “It didn’t have the warmth of Willow Grove.”
Lange said the mall was intended to solve the problem the mall’s inventor, Victor Gruen, identified in the suburbs.
She believes the next phase of the mall’s existence — whether they remain shopping malls or become something else — has to be seen as a problem that can be solved.
Whether it be housing or medical needs, malls are throwing everything at the wall to see if it sticks. PREIT anchored the Plymouth Meeting Mall with a Whole Foods. The company brought a Cooper University Health Care campus to the Moorestown Mall.
Ventresca said PREIT is experimenting with constructing apartment units at some of its other properties. The company wants to bring 275 units in Plymouth Meetings’s parking lot.
“The effort is ongoing, and we review the portfolio on a regular basis to try and advance that effort,” he said.
Lange said that what the mall was supposed to be and what the mall turned into are two different things.
“People need a social outlet and a social outlet that is low cost, has bathrooms, has benches, has food and in the absence of malls, I think a lot of municipalities need to think about expanding their community centers, expanding their public libraries, expanding their parks to offer some of these services,” Lange said.
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