Fashion Center

Fashion Center

The Fashion Center sign, still used to this day although Fashion Center has been an outdoor mall since 2009.
Location Paramus, New Jersey, USA
Opening date February 15, 1967 (1967-02-15)
Owner Willner Realty and Development Co.
No. of stores and services 11 (as of 2013)
No. of anchor tenants 6[1]
Total retail floor area 446,000 sq ft (41,400 m2)
No. of floors 2 (original indoor mall), 1 (current layout)
Lord & Taylor and former B. Altman store each operate on three levels; the B. Altman store houses T.J. Maxx, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Buy Buy Baby, with one store occupying each floor.
Public transit access NJ Transit bus: 722, 752
Website Official Website

The Fashion Center is a shopping center located in Paramus, New Jersey. From the time of its opening until 2009, the Fashion Center was a traditional indoor shopping mall. The mall slowly underwent a "de-malling" process over a period of several years prior to 2009, which resulted in the former interior portion of the mall gradually taken over by other stores and eventually sealed off, with each store inside the center having its own outside entrances.

The property is owned by Willner Realty of Pennsylvania. It has a gross leasable area of 446,000 sq ft (41,400 m2)[2] and is considered small by modern standards, with fewer than fifteen storefronts at its peak.

Due to the Bergen County blue laws, with even stricter limitations in Paramus, all retail stores are closed on Sundays except for Applebees, Blimpie, and Fairway Market.

History

Prior to the mall's construction, the area was native marsh and grassland where muskrats were trapped and sold for their fur by local residents. The mall opened on February 15, 1967 and was billed as a miniature Fifth Avenue. Hoping to capitalize on the affluent population of Bergen County, it included two anchor stores: Lord & Taylor on the north end and B. Altman and Company on the south end. The department stores were connected to each other by an indoor shopping arcade that was 1,500 feet (460 m) in length and included high-end retailers such as Rogers Peet (later replaced by Brooks Brothers), Georg Jensen, and Ann Taylor. There was also a free-standing Best & Company store in the parking lot that was built while the company was liquidating; the store instead housed a Britt's location and is now occupied by Toys "R" Us.

The Fashion Center, which was designed in a contemporary style of decor, was prosperous through the 1970s. The center court included a fountain that was also used in the mall's former logo. But as the years progressed, other malls in the Paramus area, including Garden State Plaza, Paramus Park, Riverside Square Mall, and Bergen Mall began to capture its local market share. By the 1980s, this growing competition, coupled with the demise of B. Altman, led to a severe decline in the mall's fortunes. Retailers gradually moved out, leaving Lord & Taylor as its only anchor store and leading some to refer to the Fashion Center as a dead mall.

In 1996, the vacant 180,000 sq ft (17,000 m2) B. Altman space was subdivided. Bed Bath & Beyond took over the first floor of the building and T.J. Maxx the second, with the third floor left vacant until Buy Buy Baby began occupying the space in 2012. The Fashion Center was also home to a Discovery Zone location, which closed when DZ went out of business and was replaced by another children's play restaurant, Jumpin' Jupiter, before closing in 2001.

Beginning in 2001, the owners of the Fashion Center began planning for the conversion of the mall to a traditional shopping center. In 2003, as part of the chain's expansion into the New York metropolitan area, Best Buy opened a store at the Fashion Center which necessitated the closure of some of the mall's entrances and the mall entrance of the former B. Altman store. Lord & Taylor followed suit the following year. Then in late 2008, the general mall entrance next to the Applebee's restaurant was closed then renovated and reopened in 2009, and later that year the mall added Fairway Market to its lineup of stores, which took up a majority of the former interior space. This completed the Fashion Center's transition from a traditional mall into a collection of separate stores with their own entrances and no interior common space. However, Blimpie is the only remaining tenant that is indoors since it is attached to Fairway Market. All stores can only be accessed from the outside parking lots at this time.

In September 2011, Lord & Taylor opened their first home store at the Fashion Center. It later closed in 2013 and was replaced by a World Market store in 2016. [3]

The mall has a website that was formed in 2013, but it was shut down temporarily in 2015. The website was revived a year later in 2016.

References

  1. ↑ "Fashion Center – Paramus, NJ - WRDC". wrdc.net.
  2. ↑ International Council of Shopping Centers: Fashion Center, accessed September 21, 2006
  3. ↑ JOAN VERDON. "Lord & Taylor opens first home store in Paramus". NorthJersey.com.

Coordinates: 40°58′01″N 74°04′31″W / 40.9670°N 74.0754°W / 40.9670; -74.0754

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