Meriden Mall (formerly Meriden Square and Westfield Meriden) is 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 Meriden,

Connecticut Connecticut ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York (state), New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. ...

. With nearly 900,000 square feet, Meriden Mall is Connecticut's seventh largest mall, housing over 140 shops. The mall features

Boscov's Boscov's Inc. is a family-owned department store with over fifty locations in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Ohio, Connecticut, West Virginia, and Rhode Island. Twenty-six of the stores are located in Pennsylvania. Corpo ...

and

TJ Maxx TJ Maxx (stylized as T•J•maxx) is an American discount department store chain. It has more than 1,000 stores in the United States, making it one of the largest clothing retailers in the country. TJ Maxx is the flagship chain of the TJX Comp ...

as anchors alongside specialty retailers such as Torrid.

History

The shopping complex, originally built and owned by

The May Department Stores Company The May Department Stores Company was an American holding company of department stores founded in 1877 by David May. It operated several regional department stores throughout the United States, which were managed as distinct business divisions ...

, opened in 1971. The original architecture was a two-level, dumbbell shaped

shopping center A shopping center in American English, shopping centre in English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English (see American and British English spelling differences#-re, -er, spelling differences), shopping complex, shopping arcade, ...

with two anchor stores, Connecticut-based G. Fox, which was also owned by The May Company chain, and

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 ...

. Original tenants also included Radio Shack, Spencer Gifts, Hickory Farms, Barricini Candy, Record World, Waldenbooks, CVS, a Singer sewing machine store, Bakers Shoes, Chess King, Child World Keyboard, a piano and organ store, a travel agency, Mall Liquor's, and C. B. Perkins tobacco store. The only restaurant in the main part of the mall was a Friendly's Ice Cream parlor and restaurant, though both JCPenney and G. Fox had in-house restaurants. The mall also featured an incline ramp-escalator in the center court. A 1993 renovation added a two-level wing anchored by a new

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 ...

department store and included a new

food court A food court (in Asia-Pacific also called food hall or hawker centre) is generally an indoor plaza or common area within a facility that is contiguous with the counters of multiple food Vendor, vendors and provides a common area for self-serve di ...

, creating a T-shaped

floor plan In architecture and building engineering, a floor plan is a technical drawing to scale, showing a view from above, of the relationships between rooms, spaces, traffic patterns, and other physical features at one level of a structure. Dimensio ...

. Also in 1993, G. Fox parent, May Company, acquired Boston-based

Filene's Filene's was an American department store chain founded in 1881 by William Filene. The historic Filene's Department Store in the Downtown Crossing district of Boston, Massachusetts housed the flagship store and headquarters, while branch store ...

and merged the two department stores together under Filene's, thusly Meriden Mall's G. Fox was rebranded as Filene's. The

Westfield Group Westfield Group was an Australian shopping centre company that existed from 1960 to 2014, when it split into two independent companies: Scentre Group, which owns and operates the Australian and New Zealand Westfield shopping centre portfolio; ...

acquired the mall in 1997. The mall was expanded again in an ambitious

renovation Renovation (also called remodeling) is the process of improving broken, damaged, or outdated structures. Renovations are typically done on either commercial or residential buildings. Additionally, renovation can refer to making something new, o ...

announced in 1997. The renovation saw an extra floor area of added to the center, with an additional 30 stores, creating a cross-shaped

. The new anchor, built opposite Sears, was upscale department store

Lord & Taylor Lord & Taylor was an American department store chain founded in 1826 by Samuel Lord. It had 86 full-line stores in the Northeastern United States at its peak in the 2000s, and 38 locations at the time of its liquidation in 2021. The Lord & Tay ...

, the centerpiece of the $38 million revitalization and expansion plan. In addition to its new anchor, a multistory

parking garage A multistorey car park (Commonwealth English) or parking garage (American English), also called a multistorey, parking building, parking structure, parkade (Canadian), parking ramp, parking deck, or indoor parking, is a building designed fo ...

was built adjacent to Sears facing Lewis Avenue. The renovation was completed in 1999. In 2005, Lord & Taylor shuttered their location due to repositioning. Westfield quickly moved to replace the vacancy with

Dick's Sporting Goods Dick's Sporting Goods, Inc. (stylized in all caps as DICK'S Sporting Goods) is an American chain of sporting goods stores founded in 1948 by Richard "Dick" Stack. It is the largest sporting goods retailer in the United States and is listed ...

. During 2006, Filene's announced that all locations would rebrand as Macy's, including at Meriden Mall. In 2014,

was announced as a replacement for JCPenney with an expanded and completely remodeled structure. The location was Boscov's first in Connecticut as well as the New England region. Boscov's opened in November 2015. The dawn of the 2020s saw several storied traditional department store retailers change their brick-and-mortar approach after encroachment by digital retailers and in addition to the

COVID pandemic Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In January 2020, the disease spread worldwide, resulting in the COVID-19 pandemic. The symptoms of COVID‑19 can vary but often include fev ...

. On November 8, 2018, it was announced Sears would shutter as part of an ongoing plan to eliminate its brick-and-mortar stores. On January 6, 2020, Macy's, which has much larger outposts in the region, announced a strategy to solely focus on their highest achieving locations, meaning they would be leaving the shopping center. In May 2020, Namdar Realty Group purchased the mall from

Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield SE (previously Unibail-Rodamco SE) is a European multinational commercial real estate company headquartered in Paris, France, and is the owner and operator of Westfield shopping centres in the northern hemisphere. It ...

(formerly Westfield before Westfield was purchased and merged with Unibail-Rodamco out of Europe) and began operations as owners on June 1, 2020. On September 21, 2021, Best Buy announced they would shutter their store along with several additional locations as a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Numerous replacement tenants for each space are reportedly in the midst of early discussions. On October 4, 2021, Yale New Haven Health bought the previous Macy's outpost and is set to raze the building and develop it into a prominent retail health center. On February 16, 2024, it was announced that Forever 21 Red would be permanently closing by March 31, 2024. On March 20, 2024, it was announced that Dick's Sporting Goods would be closing by April 20, 2024. This left Boscov's and TJ Maxx as remaining anchors.

References

{{Shopping malls in Connecticut Shopping malls in Connecticut Buildings and structures in Meriden, Connecticut Shopping malls established in 1971 Shopping malls in the New York metropolitan area 1971 establishments in Connecticut Namdar Realty Group

History

See also

References