Salisbury Mall

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please discuss this issue on the talk page or replace this tag with a more specific message.
This article has been tagged since March 2007.

The Salisbury Mall is a defunct shopping mall located on Civic and Glen Avenues in Salisbury, Maryland

Spanning 80 acres of land, construction began in October 1967 and the official grand opening took place on October 16, 1968. At the time it was the first enclosed climate-controlled mall on the Delmarva Peninsula. On October 16, 1968 the Daily Times in Salisbury reported that the overall cost of the mall had exceeded $7 million, and the parking lot alone could accommodate 3300 vehicles.

The front page of the paper read "Miss America will be on hand for opening of $7,000,000 mall here." The article by Mike Meise states, "Opening ceremonies and speeches are expected to be brief, according to Will Hall, mall manager ... Before the day is over, hundreds — and perhaps thousands — of shoppers or sight-seers are expected to stroll the interior mall with its illuminated fountains and planters and new shops."

The Daily Times speculated that when fully functional, the Salisbury Mall would employ at least 1,000 workers with a payroll around $6 million per month.

Due to its ideal location near Salisbury's downtown district, and no other regional mall competition within a sixty-mile radius allowed the Salisbury Mall to thrive as the only regional shopping mall on the Delmarva Peninsula for nearly twenty-five years. Conveniently located on Civic and Glen Avenues and situated in between a residential neighborhood and business along U.S. Route 50, and with the Wicomico Youth and Civic Center within 100 yards of the mall. The Twilley Shopping Center, including Toys R Us and Service Merchandise soon built stores to take advantage of the traffic from the mall, and was built within a few blocks of the Salisbury Mall. The Salisbury Mall was the only mall on the Delmarva Peninsula until the Dover Mall in Dover, Delaware (60 miles away) was opened for business in 1982. This allowed it to draw from a substantial area in excess of fifty miles in any direction for its customer base. The Salisbury Mall also enjoyed a strong tourist customer base given its location on the major roadways of the Eastern Shore of Maryland and its close proximity to the popular tourist resort Ocean City, Maryland, and city park and zoo within walking distance.

The Salisbury Mall was anchored by Sears and Hecht's (still known as The Hecht Co. at the time) when it initially opened. The mall underwent a major renovation and expansion in the mid 1970s, and an east wing was added and opened for business on September 12, 1976, which added a third anchor Hutzler's (later Peebles), a two screen movie theater, and twenty additional shops, bringing the total number of shops and restaurants to sixty, which now made the mall in the shape of an H.

On July 27, 1990 a new regional shopping mall, The Centre at Salisbury, opened for business just a few miles north of the Salisbury Mall, which signaled the beginning of the end for the aging mall, as the Salisbury Mall could not possibly be expected to compete with a mall twice its size with more than 100 stores and sit down restaurants, a ten screen modern movie theater, and a food court with nearly a dozen merchants. Hecht's and Sears vacated as their leases expired, leaving Peebles as the sole anchor. Soon after, in the fall of 1991 a Salisbury State University student was murdered in the bathroom of the mall, causing even more of its tenants to vacate.

Because of its flat roof, leaks were often a problem and by the late 1990s, the original west wing section of the mall was closed off from the rest of the building.The last major anchor Peebles closed its doors in late 2001, leaving only a handful of small Ma and Pa type merchants.

The final tenant left the mall in November 2004, enabling the building to deteriorate rapidly. It was condemned by the city of Salisbury in July 2005 after a fire had erupted inside. Demolition is scheduled to begin in the summer of 2007. There has been an ongoing debate for the past several years between the owners of the property and the local community, as to how this property should be used once the mall has been razed. As of March 2007 some plans being submitted are calling for the land to be redeveloped, possibly as a combined 700 unit residential/retail complex.