Willowbrook Mall (Wayne, New Jersey)

This article is about the shopping mall in Wayne, New Jersey. For the Houston, Texas mall, see Willowbrook Mall (Houston, Texas).
Willowbrook Mall
Location Wayne, New Jersey, United States
Opening date 1969
Owner General Growth Properties
No. of stores and services 200[1]
Total retail floor area 1,520,000 ft²[1]
No. of floors 2 (Bloomingdale's and Macy's are 3 floors)
Parking Lighted lot
Website www.willowbrook-mall.com

Willowbrook Mall is a two-level, major shopping center located in Wayne, New Jersey, United States. It is near the intersection of U.S. Route 46, Route 23 and Interstate 80. The mall opened in 1969 and was expanded or renovated in 1970, 1988, 2006, and 2015. The mall has over 200 retail establishments and a gross leasable area (GLA) of 1,514,000 ft²,[2] and is the fourth largest shopping mall in New Jersey (tied with Monmouth Mall).

Owned by General Growth Properties, the mall's main stores include Bloomingdale's, Lord & Taylor, Macy's and Sears. Its restaurants include California Pizza Kitchen, Cheesecake Factory, and Ruby Tuesday.

With blue laws in effect in Bergen County, and nearby shopping haven Paramus imposing even stricter Sunday-sales restrictions of its own, Willowbrook Mall has benefited from the spillover of shoppers on Sunday.[3]

History

Construction of a 100,000 ft² Ohrbach's store in 1968, joined by a Sears, were the original anchors of what was designed as a two-level, 110 store, indoor shopping mall, encompassing 1,500,000 ft².[4]

The opening of Willowbrook Mall came at a time when many shoppers were avoiding trips to downtown areas to shop over safety concerns. Early radio spots for the mall called it "the new downtown", and it featured anchor stores that were also located in nearby downtown Newark, or within the Wayne city limits (Bamberger's, Ohrbachs, and Sears). The Bamberger's branch opened in the fall of 1967 (before the rest of the mall), and with Newark just having dealt with race rioting in the summer of 1967, many shoppers defected to the Willowbrook location. These stores were later joined by Stern's, which had a location in downtown Paterson, New Jersey at the time (as well as a store in the Preakness section of Wayne that they operated separately).

In 1993, Willowbrook Mall became one of the first malls in New Jersey to ban smoking on mall grounds.[5] The ban was later reversed.

Sears is the mall's only remaining original anchor store and is one of the chain's top performing stores, while the former Bamberger's store has been open without interruption for the mall's entire existence. Bamberger's was rebranded as Macy's in 1986 after its corporate parent decided to rebrand its entire northeastern United States operation under its namesake marque. Ohrbach's came under new ownership and was rebranded as part of the Steinbach chain, which went out of business in 1996. The building was gutted and expanded for its new tenant Lord & Taylor, which opened in 1997. Stern's closed its doors in 2001 after its parent company, Federated Department Stores, retired the brand. Since the store already overlapped with Macy's, which every Stern's was otherwise converted to, the Willowbrook location was liquidated before its closure. Federated then converted the store to Bloomingdale's, which opened in late 2002.

In 2015 General Growth Properties announced that the mall would undergo a 2 year $23 million dollar renovation. The renovation will entail new ceilings in the Sears & Macy's wings, an overhaul of the seating in the food court, new flooring throughout the mall, additional seating, and a two-story streetscape theme for the Bloomingdales wing. [6]

The mall and its surrounding access roads and parking areas are prone to flooding in rainstorms. The Passaic River flows near the mall and one of its tributaries, the Pompton River, runs behind it.

Anchors

Anchors are (listed in descending order by square footage)

Transportation

An NJ Transit park and ride facility, opened in 1974, provides bus service to and from the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Midtown Manhattan.[7] Local bus service is provided by NJ Transit.

The Willowbrook public transit complex provides service to the following destinations:[8]

Local service

Interstate service

The following lines all serve Port Authority Bus Terminal as well.

In addition, the 191 and 195 buses terminate here.

In media

Willowbrook Mall was the site of The Adventures of Pete & Pete special episode, "What We Did on Our Summer Vacation" (May 17, 1992), in which Ellen's photo booth was located in the parking lot of the mall.

References

  1. 1 2 General Growth Properties: Willowbrook, accessed January 17, 2011
  2. ↑ Willowbrook Mall, International Council of Shopping Centers, backed up by the Internet Archive as of March 4, 2008. Accessed March 31, 2011.
  3. ↑ Strum, Charles. "PARAMUS JOURNAL; On Sundays, Bergen Shoppers Rest", The New York Times, December 7, 1992. Accessed March 31, 2011.
  4. ↑ "Ohrbach's Builds in Jersey", The New York Times, September 27, 1968. p. 75.
  5. ↑ "2 Big Malls Ban Smoking", The New York Times, October 8, 1993. p. B6.
  6. ↑ Staff Writer (4 June 2015). "Willowbrook Mall in Wayne to get a facelift". NorthJErsey.com. Retrieved 4 June 2015.
  7. ↑ "Park-Ride Center to Open Monday at Willowbrook Mall", The New York Times, January 4, 1974. p. 64.
  8. ↑ Vist, Willowbrook Mall. Accessed May 6, 2015. "The following bus lines travel to and/or from Willowbrook Mall: 11, 28, 193, 194, 197, 704, 712, and 746."

External links

Coordinates: 40°53′20″N 74°15′36″W / 40.889°N 74.260°W / 40.889; -74.260

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