Nittany Mall
| Location | State College, PA United States |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 40.832353, -77.799851 |
| Address |
2901 East College Avenue, State College, PA 16801 |
| Opening date | January 1968 |
| Developer | Crown American |
| Management | Namdar Realty Group |
| Owner | Namdar Realty Group |
| No. of stores and services | 75+ |
| No. of anchor tenants | 4 |
| Total retail floor area | 532,160 square feet (49,439 m2)[1] |
| No. of floors | 1 |
| Parking | Lighted lot |
| Public transit access |
 CATA bus: M, XB, XG |
| Website | ShopNittanyMall.com |
Nittany Mall is an enclosed regional shopping mall in State College, Pennsylvania. It is located at the intersections of Route 150 and Route 26, one mile off the I-99 corridor. It is uniquely situated within four miles of the Pennsylvania State University, allowing the mall to attract both the area resident as well as young, affluent college students.
History
The Nittany Mall was developed by Crown American and officially opened in January 1968. The mall originally had just two anchors, Grants and Penn Traffic, and approximately 30 smaller stores.
Its first expansion in the early 1970s included the addition of a Sears store, which was relocated from downtown State College, and over a dozen other smaller stores.[2] The new Sears occupied over 70,000 square feet and included 45 merchandise departments and a 10-bay automotive center. The store, which was expanded and relocated to a new east section of the mall in 1990, remains one of the anchors today.
After the closing of the Grants chain in 1976, Gee Bee took over the space. In 1992, it was converted to Value City after that company acquired the Gee Bee stores. Value City operated until 1997 when it was closed and razed to make room for a new Kaufmann's department store. The May Department Stores Company, which owned Kaufmann's, was sold to Federated Department Stores in 2005. Federated proceeded to convert various May properties to Macy's, including the Nittany Mall store, in 2006. Macy's is the largest store at the mall.
Penn Traffic, one of the mall's original anchors, was sold to developer and Hess's department store chain owner Crown American in 1982 who rebranded the stores as Hess's. Hess's continued to operate at the mall until 1994 when the chain was sold to Bon-Ton Stores. The Bon-Ton is currently one of the mall's anchor stores.
The expansion and renovation of the Nittany Mall in 1989-1990 included the addition of a fourth anchor, JCPenney. The 63,000 sq. ft. store remained at the mall until 2015 when JCPenney announced plans to close 39 of its stores in the United States that year.[3] The JCPenney store was replaced by a Dunham's Sports, one of the nation's largest sporting goods chains, in 2016.
Today, the mall has over 532,000 square feet of retail space with more than 75 stores and services including four anchors. Despite various proposals over the years for other enclosed shopping malls to be built in the area, the Nittany Mall remains the only one in the region. It is currently owned and managed by Mason Asset Management which acquired the mall from Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust in 2014.
See also
References
- ↑ "Nittany Mall Fact Sheet" (PDF). PREIT. Retrieved May 2, 2011.
- ↑ Crown Construction Firm Continues Growth in 1969
- ↑ "J.C. Penney in Nittany Mall closing". Centre Daily Times. The McClatchy Company. January 8, 2015.