Burlington Center was a

shopping mall A shopping mall (or simply mall) is a large indoor shopping center, usually Anchor tenant, anchored by department stores. The term ''mall'' originally meant pedestrian zone, a pedestrian promenade with shops along it, but in the late 1960s, i ...

located in Burlington Township,

New Jersey New Jersey is a U.S. state, state located in both the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. Located at the geographic hub of the urban area, heavily urbanized Northeas ...

. It was built by

The Rouse Company The Rouse Company was a publicly traded shopping mall and community developer from 1956 until 2004, when GGP Inc., General Growth Properties (GGP) purchased the company. It was founded by Hunter Moss and James Rouse, James W. Rouse in 1939. Begin ...

Columbia, Maryland Columbia is a planned community in Howard County, Maryland, United States, consisting of 10 self-contained villages. With a population of 104,681 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the second-most-populous community in Maryland ...

. Its

anchors An anchor is a device, normally made of metal, used to secure a vessel to the bed of a body of water to prevent the craft from drifting due to wind or current. The word derives from Latin ', which itself comes from the Greek (). Anchor ...

were

Macy's Macy's is an American department store chain founded in 1858 by Rowland Hussey Macy. The first store was located in Manhattan on Sixth Avenue between 13th and 14th Streets, south of the present-day flagship store at Herald Square on West 34 ...

JCPenney Penney OpCo LLC , Trade name, doing business as JCPenney (colloquially Penney's and abbreviated JCP) is an American department store chain store, chain with 649 stores across 49 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. It is managed as part of the Catalys ...

, and

Sears Sears, Roebuck and Co., commonly known as Sears ( ), is an American chain of department stores and online retailer founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosen ...

. The mall closed on January 8, 2018, with only Sears remaining open until its closure on September 2, 2018. Demolition of the mall began in early 2021.

History

Burlington Center mall opened in 1982 and was developed by

. The opening of Burlington Center mall in 1982 on the formerly rural corridor along County Route 541, has been credited as the trigger of a development boom on the stretch between Burlington Township and Mount Holly Township.

opened a store in August 1996 as an addition to the existing

Strawbridge's Strawbridge's, formerly Strawbridge & Clothier, was a department store in the northeastern United States, with stores in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. The Center City Philadelphia flagship store was, in its day, a gracious urban empori ...

and

stores. Jager Management acquired the mall in November 1999 for $10.5 million. Strawbridge's, a longtime anchor at the mall, was converted to a

store as of September 9, 2006. At its peak, the mall had 3 anchor stores and 100 smaller stores and restaurants.

Decline and redevelopment

In recent years, The Burlington Center mall saw an increase in the vacancy rate with few national chains remaining in the mall. In January 2010, Macy's announced that its Burlington Center location would close by March 2010. In June 2012, the mall was sold at auction to Moonbeam Equities for $4.4 million. In 2014, JCPenney left the mall as part of the chain's round of closures affecting 33 locations nationwide, leaving Sears as the only anchor store at the mall. In 2014, the mall announced plans for redevelopment that would demolish the former Macy's and JCPenney and replace it with an outdoor shopping area. Construction was expected to begin by the summer of 2016, but work was delayed as a result of lease renegotiations with Sears, a primary property holder. Throughout 2017, the mall continued to decline. By summer 2017, only a few stores were left at the mall, including a food pantry, arcade, Bath & Body Works, and Foot Locker. The food court was completely vacant and portions of the parking lot were overgrown with weeds. As of the 2017 Christmas season, two non-profits were asked to leave the mall by December 22. The mall voluntarily closed on January 8, 2018 due to extensive damage from a burst water pipe, after originally planning to close in March 2018. The Sears store located on the property, which was under separate ownership than the rest of the mall, remained open. On May 31, 2018, it was announced that Sears would be closing in September 2018 as part of a plan to close 72 stores nationwide, leaving the mall entirely without tenants. In January 2019, Clarion Partners LLC was moving ahead with plans to acquire the former mall from Moonbeam Capital Investments LLC and demolish it for an industrial development. OClario Partners purchased the mall for $22 million. On February 1, 2019, a large bronze elephant named Petal that had been in the mall since 1982 was moved out of the closed mall and was relocated to the Burlington Riverwalk. In November, 2019, a new proposal was introduced for the redevelopment of the mall, including retail, restaurants, 400 to 500 housing units and several large warehouses. Following the demolition of the mall in 2021, construction on a warehouse on the former site of the mall began in 2022.

Controversy

The mall was closed early on January 13, 2007, due to gang-related violence that may have involved 20 individuals connected with the

Bloods The Bloods are a primarily African Americans, African American street gang which was founded in Los Angeles, California. The gang is widely known for Crips–Bloods gang war, its rivalry with the Crips. It is identified by the red color worn ...

and the Next Level Gang (considered a stepping stone to the

Crips The Crips are a primarily African-American alliance of street gangs that are based in the coastal regions of Southern California. Founded in Los Angeles, California, in 1969, mainly by Raymond Washington and Stanley Williams, the Crips ...

Former anchors

Mall anchors included: *

– , (opened August 2, 1982; closed September 2, 2018) *

– (originally Strawbridge & Clothier; closed 2010) *

– (opened 1996; closed 2014)

Location

The mall was located on Mount Holly Road ( County Route 541), between Interstate 295 (exits 47A/B) and the

New Jersey Turnpike The New Jersey Turnpike (NJTP) is a system of controlled-access highway, controlled-access toll roads in the U.S. state of New Jersey. The turnpike is maintained by the New Jersey Turnpike Authority (NJTA).The Garden State Parkway, although ma ...

(exit 5).

References

External links

*
Moonbeam Capital Investments
{{Philadelphia Malls Buildings and structures in Burlington County, New Jersey Shopping malls in New Jersey Shopping malls established in 1982 Shopping malls disestablished in 2018 Tourist attractions in Burlington County, New Jersey Burlington Township, New Jersey Defunct shopping malls in the United States Demolished shopping malls in the United States 1982 establishments in New Jersey 2018 disestablishments in New Jersey Buildings and structures demolished in 2021 Demolished buildings and structures in New Jersey