In today's day and age, it is quite amazing that a community the size of Hazleton, Pennsylvania is a rare community that is actually able to support two malls.While the nearby Laurel Mall may get more attention from customers for more national tenants, the Church Hill Mall manages to survive with more local tenants. The mall is a small 'hallway mall' that is basically a shopping center with an enclosed walkway. It does have an Ollie's Bargain Outlet as an anchor though in addition to Family Dollar as a inline tenant. CVS did operate a location here for a bit, but it would relocate down the road to a new standalone store.
It would appear that not much is known about the history of the mall. All I can find is that original anchor Gaylord's (a local chain; space now split between Ollie's and other tenants) opened in 1965. So that would suggest the mall opened around the same time. Gaylord's would become Gee Bee and later Value City for a time. At the other end of the mall, a local supermarket served as an anchor before now operating as a Key Foods. I'm unsure of what this space was originally, but it seems likely that it has always been a supermarket.
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| It appears that this would have been where Gaylord's, Gee-Bee & Value City's mall entrance would have been. |
The original supermarket tenant here was Acme, from what I've discovered. However, the exact lineage of stores after Acme I don't know (although Thomas Foodtown was in that spot for a long time until they closed and became Key Foods).
ReplyDeleteI was thinking ACME as a possibility. Good to see my suspicions were correct. Still find it interesting that Key Foods opened a location so far from its core base of NYC though.
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