|
Northern Lights Shopping Center is a strip mall located in Economy, Pennsylvania near Pittsburgh. While it continues to serve as a traditional community-style strip mall for the immediate area, it was a major power center-style strip mall from its opening until the early 2000s. Due to the high vacancy rate at the plaza, it is today largely considered a dead mall. A Walmart that opened next door to Northern Lights in 2014 is expected to help revitalize the plaza as well as help dilapidated southern Beaver County. ==History== The plaza opened in 1962 along Pennsylvania Route 65, serving as the major shopping center for the Beaver Valley. For decades, J. C. Penney was the main anchor store for the plaza, having a three-story store at the plaza. Other anchor tenants included Sears,〔 local supermarket chain Giant Eagle, and discount department store chain Hills. The plaza was divided into three buildings: the main eastern portion of the plaza facing the Ohio River housed J. C. Penney and Hills. The northern portion of the plaza housed Giant Eagle, while the southern portion housed Sears; all three buildings also housed many smaller shops. Despite the opening of the Beaver Valley Mall in 1970 in nearby Center Township, Northern Lights continued to attract shoppers, although Sears did move to the Beaver Valley Mall at this time. However, the collapse of the steel industry in the 1980s, combined with the Beaver Valley Mall's easy access off of the Beaver Valley Expressway and the rapid development of Center Township, Cranberry Township, and Robinson Township, eventually saw a gradual decline for Northern Lights. In 1998, J. C. Penney moved to the Beaver Valley Mall to become its new fourth anchor store. Around the same time, Hills was acquired by Ames, however Ames itself experienced its own problems related to the Hills acquisition. Since Ames liquidated and closed all of its stores in 2002, Giant Eagle has been the plaza's sole anchor tenant. Gradually, many of the smaller stores left, leaving Dollar Tree, Huntington Bank, Family Dollar, Dollar General, and a small handful of mom-and-pop businesses and doctor offices as of July 2013. The parking lot and the empty storefronts haven't been maintained in years, leading to a dilapidated state. Even Wendy's closed its location on an out parcel of the property in 2010; the chain is popular in the area and is fourth behind only Subway, McDonald's, and the locally-owned Brighton Hot Dog Shoppe in terms of number of locations in Beaver County. In 2006, the roof at the former J. C. Penney location collapsed. This prompted the then-new owners of the plaza, Zamias Services, Inc., to demolish the former J. C. Penney location for safety reasons, leaving a big hole (literally) in the middle of the plaza and removing over of leaseable space.〔https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1129&dat=20060309&id=pehRAAAAIBAJ&sjid=MXIDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6642,5230970〕 Since then, there have been talks of moving the remaining tenants into the two smaller portions of the plaza so that the two larger portions—the two that were on each side of J. C. Penney (including the former Hills/Ames store) can be considered for redevelopment.〔http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/stories/2010/03/15/daily46.html?page=all〕 Zamias later admitted that if Northern Lights wasn't included in a package deal with other properties such as Pittsburgh Mills and instead was standalone, it wouldn't have acquired the property.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Northern Lights Shopping Center」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|