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., it has 5 stores and services and is only anchored by a fourteen-screen Regal Cinemasmovie theater. In under a year it went from 52 to 7 stores.
History
ShoppingTown opened in 1954 as one of Syracuse's first suburban open-air shopping centers. Early tenants included Dey Brothersdepartment store, The Addis Company, 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 2010 CNY Gymnastics'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. The mall lost three of its four anchor tenants. Macy's was the first anchor tenant to go, closing for good in March 2015. Dick's Sporting Goods closed permanently in October 2015 and moved to its new location down the road. JCPenney threw in the towel, leaving ShoppingTown Mall and closing permanently in April 8th, 2016. 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 inJanuary 2018. Sears moved away from ShoppingTown Mall in September 2nd, 2018 and this left the mall anchorless.
Foreclosure
On June 24, 2019, 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.
