| Location | West Nyack, New York, USA |
|---|---|
| No. of stores and services | 400+ |
| No. of anchor tenants | 16 |
| Total retail floor area | 2,217,323 sq ft (205,996.0 m2)[1] |
| Parking | 9,729 parking spaces |
| No. of floors | 4, plus 1 level below ground parking garage |
| Website | Official site |
The Palisades Center Mall, often referred to as the Palisades Mall, in West Nyack, New York is the eighth largest shopping mall in the United States by total area, and sixth largest by gross leasable space.[2] As one of the nation's most lucrative malls,[3] the mall, which houses over 200 stores, receives 20 million visitors a year, and produces $57 million a year in taxes, including $40 million in sales tax and $17 million in property taxes.[4]
It is located west of NY Route 303, south of exit 12 of the New York State Thruway (I-87 and I-287), and north of NY Route 59, near the intersection of the New York State Thruway and the Palisades Interstate Parkway, and a couple of miles from the Tappan Zee Bridge.[4]
Named after the nearby Palisades, which border the Hudson River and the eastern part of Rockland County, the mall is operated by the Pyramid Companies, the original developer and current owner.
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According to the the mall's sponsoring partner, Thomas Valenti, it took 16 years to get the mall approved and built.[4] The 130-acre site[5] was purchased by The Pyramid Companies for about $3 million and promised to clean up the two landfills, which were filled with incinerator ash and garbage.[6] The 875,000-square-foot mall[7] was proposed in 1985 with a goal of luring upscale retailers like Lord & Taylor, and a promise to keep sales tax dollars from slipping across state lines into New Jersey. The site was selected for its proximity to the New York State Thruway and Westchester County. Its location four miles from New Jersey, where blue laws keep the malls closed on Sundays, was also a factor.[6] Local residents, recalling how the Nanuet Mall nearly drew the life out of Rockland County's traditional shopping villages about 20 years earlier,[6] opposed the mall, predicting that it would bring crime,[7] increased traffic, air pollution, and an economic downturn to the area's downtowns,[8][4] and that the site was not properly tested for toxins. Ground was broken on the project in October 1993.[6][8] The mall cost between $250 million and $280 million.[6][7]
The Palisades Center was built around the Mount Moor Cemetery, a 150-year-old cemetery for African Americans established in 1849 whose stated purpose was to provide a final resting place for people of color, including Native American and African American veterans of American wars from the Civil War to the Korean War. The cemetery is visible from a number of points in the mall, and was not undisturbed by construction.[9]
The Historical Society of Rockland County placed a historical sign which reads:
| “ | This burying ground for Colored people, was deeded on July 7, 1849 by James Benson. and Jane Benson. his wife to William H. Moore, Stephen Samuels and Isaac Williams. trustees. The cemetery has provided burial space for colored people, including veterans of the American Civil War, the Spanish American War, World Wars l and ll and the Korean War. The grounds have been maintained since 1940 by the Mount Moor Cemetery Association, Inc.[10] | ” |
The construction of the mall faced a number of environmental obstacles before it began. What was initially thought to be a mastodon buried there turned out to be a circus elephant. Nesting grounds for a nearly extinct red-legged partridge turned out to be a domesticated pheasant. Other problems included flooding from one of the region's glacier-dug bottom spots and runoff from three landfills on the property.[4]
The mall opened in March 1998.[4][11][12] From the beginning it was dogged by rumors. These included the notion that a serial rapist was attacking shoppers, that the developers were on the verge of bankruptcy, that the underground parking lot was sinking because it was built on unstable swampland, and that it would collapse under its own weight. After the 1999-2000 holiday seasons, rumors of the mall's closing abounded. On the January 6, 2000 episode of The Rosie O'Donnell Show, host Rosie O'Donnell, who lives in Nyack, mentioned the rumor of the building's sinking to her audience. Local police, town engineering officials and the mall's developers, however, assured the public that there was no truth to these stories, and that the mall was safe, and in no danger of closing.[4][9][12]
Opponents of the mall have stated that their predictions prior to the mall's construction have come to fruition, complaining that the Superfund site located on the property was paved over rather than cleaned, and that the mall tax receipts failed to lower the average homeowner's bill as advertised. Mall opponent Bruce Broadley commented, "Everything we said would happen happened. Go back and look at all the proposals and drawings. It's a vastly different mall that was built. It was sold as upscale. What they built is arguably one of the ugliest malls in America." These complaints were detailed in the 2008 documentary Megamall. However, Clarkstown Town Board member Shirley Lasker, who opposed the mall, acknowledged in 2008 that their concerns over traffic did not materialize. Valenti explained that the $23 million spent to fix area roads and create the mall's own exit on the Thruway prevented the predicted traffic congestion. Columnist Greg Clary argues that aesthetics are subjective, that average homeowners' bills did not go down due to continued spending on the part of elected officials, and that while the downtowns were negatively impacted by the mall, this is not unique to the area, and can be averted by town planners who represent some of the 20 million of the mall's patrons.[4]
On November 5, 2002, voters in Clarkstown voted on whether to approve the mall's leasing out of 100,000 square feet of unoccupied space, in keeping with a 1997 covenant that Pyramid Companies signed stipulating that any additional leasing would be decided by a town referendum as part of a deal that let the mall take over three town streets. Opponents argued that Pyramid Companies had previously insisted that this space had no practical use when they had built beyond the original 1.8 million square feet they were allowed, but Pyramid insisted that they did not wish to expand beyond the limits of the mall, but to lease space already contained in the building, which would be occupied by Kids City, an interactive educational and recreational center for children ages 3 to 12. Nicole Doliner, president of the Rockland Civic Association, however, characterized Kids City as a "theme park".[3]
New York Times writer Joe Queenan criticized the mall's Brutalist exterior for lacking any sense of design or theme, and characterized its rectangular layout as "a series of interlocking coffins". He also criticized the visible "trash gondolas" near the Interstate 287 entrance. Queenan had kinder things to say about the mall's vast interior, likening its sprawling floors to a retail version of Centre Georges Pompidou, analogizing its amalgamated structure to the "Gotham skyline", and lauding the bowling alley, ice rink and food court Ferris wheel for giving people an opportunity to play "adult hooky".[13]
The mall has four levels, each of which is approximately the shape of a rectangle. The mall has between 200 and 250 stores,[14][13] including 16 anchor stores.[9] These currently are:
The east end of the mall includes Macy's and an ice rink on the 3rd floor.[13] The west end features a Best Buy, Sports Authority, Burlington Coat Factory and a Target. Other stores in the mall include JCPenney, Barnes & Noble, Bed Bath & Beyond, Modell's Sporting Goods, and Staples.
On the fourth floor can be found an ice rink[6] (at the east end), a stadium-seating 21-screen AMC Theatres,[18] and further down toward the west end, an IMAX theater.[19][20]
There are numerous dining options throughout the mall. On the first floor is The Cheesecake Factory, which replaced Rainforest Cafe, which was the first of the mall's original twelve restaurants to close, in 2002.[21]
On the second floor is Johnny Rockets.[22][23]
The 2,000 seat food court[7] in the center of the third level contains in addition to over a dozen restaurants, a Ferris wheel[18] and Philadelphia Toboggan Company Carousel Number 15, a carousel that was built in 1907 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001.[24] In May 2009, mall management announced that the then-101-year-old carousel would be disassembled and removed the following month.[25] In 2009, the carousel was replaced with a modern, two floor, Venetian carousel made by Bertazzon of Italy and owned by Island Carousels.
The fourth floor, also called ThEATery (a portmanteau of "theater" and "eatery"), includes several casual dining restaurants, such as Buffalo Wild Wings, T.G.I. Friday's, Chili's, East, Stir Crazy, Outback Steakhouse, Dave & Buster's, Bravo! McDonalds and Tony Roma's.[14] East, which serves Japanese cuisine, has been praised in particular. Its selling point is a conveyor belt that moves items at eye level, which can be selected by diners, who pay for them later. The restaurant's Philadephia Roll, which is made with salmon, caviar, avocado and cream cheese, was lauded by New York Times critic Joe Queenan.[13]