Staten Island Mall

Staten Island Mall

The mall's new wing, public plaza and front entrance as a result of the 2015 expansion project
Location	Staten Island, New York
Opening date	August 9, 1973
Developer	Feist & Feist Realty Corporation
Management	Brookfield Properties Retail Group
Owner	Brookfield Properties Retail Group
No. of stores and services	208
No. of anchor tenants	10 (9 open, 1 vacant)
Total retail floor area	1,274,000 ft²
No. of floors	2 (3 in Macy's)
Website	www.statenislandmall.com

Staten Island Mall is a shopping mall in New Springville, Staten Island, New York City, opened in 1973. It is the only indoor shopping mall in the borough.^[1] It is the largest retail center on the island and is the site of the island's third-largest public transit hub after the St. George Terminal and Eltingville Transit Center, with numerous bus routes that connect to the periphery of the mall area. It is the second-biggest shopping center in NYC. The anchor stores are Macy's, Dave & Buster's, Barnes & Noble, Ulta Beauty, AMC Theatres, Primark, Lidl, The Container Store, and JCPenney. There is a vacant anchor store that was once Sears.

Description[]

The main entrance to the Staten Island Mall in 2004.

The mall is owned by Brookfield Properties Retail Group of Chicago, Illinois, itself a division of Brookfield Asset Management, whose USA operations are based in Manhattan. The mall has 200 stores employing approximately 3,000 people. Anchor tenants include JCPenney, Macy's, Lidl, and Primark. The Food District also has anchors of Dave and Buster's, and an AMC Dine-in Cinema. A carnival by Reithoffer Shows was held from 1998 through 2018, bringing rides, games, and food stands into the parking lots of the mall. Amusements of America took the place of Reithoffer starting in 2019. The mall also has a strip mall called The Crossing, which features multiple shops and a restaurants, like a dollar store, Panera bread and Carvel. There are multiple vacant spaces, which formerly included a Babies R Us and a TGI Fridays. The Babies R Us space is being used as a Spirit Halloween in the fall, and a vaccination site for COVID-19. The surrounding area of the mall also includes strip malls, big box stores, power centers, and brick and mortar areas.

History[]

Prior to the construction of the mall, the land was occupied by the Staten Island Airport, which opened in 1941. The site was sold in 1955 with a shopping and amusement center envisaged, known as the Staten Island Center. In 1964 it was announced that Macy's and Abraham & Straus would open stores across from E. J. Korvette.^[2] Construction of the mall commenced in 1970 and it opened on August 9, 1973,^[3] with Macy's and Sears. The A&S store was not built on the property as announced years earlier. The shopping center was developed by Feist and Feist Realty Corp. and sold to the Rouse Company in 1980. Rouse remodeled the mall by removing the small shops in the center court known as the "Honeycomb", adding escalators to the original six, and installing additional trees and several new fountains throughout the mall.

The mall was renovated and expanded in 1993 when the JCPenney wing was completed. JCPenney relocated to the mall from its longtime occupancy at the Forest Avenue Shoppers Town. The mall was originally a two-story building shaped like a letter "T", with a large outdoor plaza on the Richmond Avenue side, gross leasable area (GLA) of 1,274,000 square feet (118,400 m²)^[4] and a tenant GLA of 622,000 square feet (57,800 m²).

In 2008, following the US economic meltdown, several stores, including some open for many years, closed down and discount or non-national retailers took their places. Other spaces sat vacant, with their windows being used to display other stores' merchandise. However, by mid-2010, higher-end shops such as Michael Kors, Pandora and Armani Exchange opened for business, and by 2011, numerous new brands (Adidas, Love Culture, etc.) were relocating or updating their looks while new tenants continued to revive the mall's image.

The mall was expanded by 242,000 square feet^[5] between 2016 and 2019, which included the addition of a new parking garage along with new restaurants and retailers including Zara, Ulta Beauty, Dave & Buster's, Barnes & Noble, Lidl and AMC Theatres. The food court was moved from its former area into the newly expanded area in the mall, renamed the "Food District".^[6] On March 15, 2017, Primark opened on the second floor of the Sears store, while The Container Store occupied the former Sears auto center. On July 14, 2019, it was announced that Sears would be shutting down at the mall in mid-September 2019 after 46 years. The store closed on September 15, 2019.^[7]

In 2019 it was announced that Century 21 would relocate its existing store in the mall to the lower level of the former Sears in 2020. However, the COVID-19 pandemic cancelled those plans when the company filled for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on September 10, 2020, and closed all stores on December 6, 2020. A comic book shop, shooting range, Mediterranean Grill, Krispy Kreme, sauce shop, candy store, and multiple new clothing stores were being added for 2021, in the places of tenants that closed due to the pandemic, including Justice and The Disney Store.

Transportation[]

Several local, select and express New York City Transit Authority buses stop and either travel through or on the perimeter (where park and ride facilities exist) of the mall's campus. They include the S44, S94, S59, S89, S61 and S91 local buses/limited counterparts, the S55 and S56 buses with no corresponding limited buses, the S79 Select Bus Service route, and the SIM4, SIM4C, SIM4X, SIM8, SIM8X and SIM31 express buses.^[8]

References[]

External links[]

• Staten Island Mall official website

Coordinates: 40°34′54″N 74°9′56″W / 40.58167°N 74.16556°W / 40.58167; -74.16556