Thursday, July 25, 2019

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.

5 comments:

  1. If I'm not mistaken, that Bradley's Book Outlet store is refusing some old Waldenbooks signs (see here: http://columbiaclosings.com/wordpress/?p=390). Cool!

    Sad to hear of the mall's current status, especially with any hope of Rural King moving in dashed.

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  2. What gets me is with this mall being in decline for a number of years, and so many empty spaces here,I'm surprised it's still in existence...we all know the real reasons why the major anchors closed down, but some people still to this day blame local leaders, cost of rent being too high ,the current mall owners (depending on who you talk to ,they are from out of state and dont care what kind of shape the mall is in,etc..) ,or they are not trying hard enough to bring new anchors in..My take on this is ,if nothing is done soon,this mall will cease to exist within the next few years...

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    Replies
    1. Sadly this problem is occurring nationally. There are some infamous companies literally buying malls just to let them rot.

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