Shenango Valley Mall - Raw & Real Retail
This is our walkthrough of the Shenango Valley Mall in Hermitage, PA from August 4, 2019. This is a dying mall about an hour & a half south of Erie, PA. Both Macy's and Sears left a couple years ago, and most of the inline stores in their respective wings have long since emptied out. Renovations in 1997 severely whitened the mall and added a curved drop ceiling. There is an abandoned wing behind the JCPenney which shows off in full glory the older style of the mall, likely abandoned because of severe subsidence, causing the floors to buckle in several spots.
From wikipedia: On August 1, 2019, LRC Realty of Akron, Ohio announced that they will acquire the mall. The company is looking to create a first-class shopping facility with best in-class restaurants and retailers. The company plans on creating an open-air design with public places that will be attractive to the area. The president of LRC Realty says the community should expect a project similar to The Block Northway on McKnight Road in Ross Township, Pennsylvania, which was a former mall turned into a lifestyle center by LRC. The company also designed the nearby Hermitage Plaza. Specific dates or plans have yet to be announced.
Songs used in this video (in order):
Paul Mauriat - Une Fille Aux Yeux Clairs
Francis Monkman - Current Affairs
The Steve Gray Orchestra - Only A Dream Away
Steve Gray - Wonder Groove
Steve Gray - Reach Out
Here is a 2017 article written by Nicholas Eckhart on the Dead and Dying Retail blog. Since this article, many more stores have closed, leaving the mall with a ghost town sort of feeling:
Like many other towns around the country, the retail center of Sharon, Pennsylvania used to be downtown. The shift away from downtown began in 1953 for Sharon, when the Hickory Plaza was built in Hickory Township. That shopping center would go on to be renamed as Hermitage Towne Plaza in later years.
It wouldn't be until the late 1960s that the Shenango Valley Mall was built. The 514,000 square foot enclosed mall was developed by the Crown American Corporation. The mall was opened with JCPenney (163,000 square feet), Sears (105,000 square feet), and W.T. Grant (76,000 square feet) as anchors. Sears and JCPenney both relocated from downtown Sharon.
Hickory Township grew in population after the growth of retail in the area. On January 2, 1976, Hickory Township became the city of Hermitage. In Fall 1976, a Strouss department store opened in the former W.T. Grant location. It made Strouss' 11th location. Strouss also had a store in downtown Sharon that closed around the time the Shenango Valley Mall location opened. That store is now The Winner. In 1986, the Strouss moniker was retired in favor of Kaufmann's. In 2006, Kaufmann's was changed to Macy's after May department stores were sold to Federated department stores. A small north wing of the mall was closed in 1997 during a renovation.
On January 4th, 2017 the Shenango Valley Mall took a major hit when both Macy's and Sears announced that their stores were closing. The mall would be losing two of its three anchor stores at the same time. On March 26th, both stores closed for good. Luckily, the JCPenney store was spared from being closed when that company announced they were closing stores.
The future of the mall does remain in question. The Sears wing was mostly empty on my visit. FYE was shutting its store down. Other retailers, like Bath & Body Works, haven't updated their stores. Rue 21 was announced to be closing after my visit.
The mall seems to have one particularly valuable asset: its location. Three major roads intersect at the mall. East State Street runs to the south side of the mall, North Hermitage Road runs to east side of the mall, and Shenango Valley Freeway (a relief route to East State Street) ends into the mall. I don't know how much more retail can be built up in the area though. There are a number of major shopping centers and big box stores around the mall. However, while Hermitage and Sharon are mid-sized towns, more people might shop here from the east side of Youngstown, which is more of a retail desert. That would place this mall in direct competition with the two major Youngstown area malls, Eastwood Mall and Southern Park Mall.
One advantage the Shenango Valley Mall does have over the larger malls across the border in Ohio is that clothing and footwear sales are tax free in Pennsylvania. Hermitage also has a median household income of $56,986 according to city-data. The city of Hermitage has only 16,118 people, but Mercer county does have 115,195 people. I don't think an outlet mall would work for Hermitage since there is a Premium Outlets already in the county.