Cranberry Mall

The Cranberry Mall was likely built at some in the late 1980s, as it shares a lot of traits with the Columbia Mall near Bloomsburg, PA which is confirmed to have opened in 1988. The reason I say the two are similar is because they both likely opened with the same anchors of JCPenney, Sears, Bon-Ton and Hills. Both Hills locations would convert to Ames and funny enough both in turn would both be partly reused by Dunham's Sports. Unlike Bloomsburg, an Ollie's Bargain Outlet would open in the remainder of the Ames space.

When I visited back in 2016, I would of rated this a C-class mall since JCPenney had already closed at that point. Sadly, this mall today is not in great shape and definitely belongs in the D-dying category. Bon-Ton closed as part of its bankruptcy last year while Sears had closed this location in late 2017. This leaves Dunham's as the sole anchor with mall access. A future blog post will highlight this Bon-Ton store during its final weeks of its liquidation sale.

JCPenney already closed, but left their signage behind

Former KB Toys!

While I personally love the architecture and design here, I don't see a bright future for this mall. The mall has already gone past the tipping point and with the recent GNC announcement of them pulling certain mall locations, I can't help but feel it this location will be among them. There was a period of time where the former Sears was apparently being looked at by Rural King, but any hope for that conversion will not happen since Rural King bought the former Kmart in Franklin.

Syracuse's Saks Off 5th Gets Sacked

While Destiny USA is still Syracuse's go-to mall, it too is not immune to store closures. Take this, for example. Saks off 5th was one of the outlet stores to open as part of the Destiny expansion from the Carousel Mall days. While the loss of Saks will leave a vacancy, I don't expect it to hit the mall hard. Saks' parent company has been looking to close locations in an effort to be more viable. And with new tenants, such as LEGO, already announced to open elsewhere in the mall, it doesn't look the mall is losing steam anytime soon.

While in the area visiting family, we took a trip to the mall and I decided to get some photos before this store is gone forever.