Eastern Hills Mall
Opening partly in late 1971 with 14 stores, the Eastern Hills Mall (planned to be called Buffalo Mall by the Edward J. DeBartolo Corporation) was completed by 1972. With anchors of AM&A's, JCPenney, Sears, Jenss, and Hengerer's, the mall was the largest in the Buffalo market at the time. The mall also had a Woolworths store as a junior anchor right up until 1997 when the company closed all its stores. Kaufman's would take the Sibley's space over in 1990 while in 1994 AM&A's became Bon-Ton. The mall saw a period of decline in the 1990s, likely thanks to the 1989 opening of the Walden Galleria. Jenss would close its doors in 1997, and a Burlington Coat Factory would move in the following year until closing in 2005. Kaufman's became Macy's in 2006. Dave & Buster's, which I believe took over the former Burlington, moved to the Walden Galleria in 2015 and a lot of stores either followed or closed. Macy's closed in spring 2017, but was quickly replaced by a vendor marketplace. Sears closed in fall 2018.
The good news is that even with the loss of Bon-Ton and Sears, replacement stores have already been found. Bon-Ton is set to become a Raymour & Flanigan furniture store while Sears will be replaced with a local Buffalo-themed retailer. Long-term plans call for the mall to be redeveloped into an open-air shopping center, but it would seem that the anchor buildings would likely stay since they are filled or will be.
Whether the mall stays indoor or converts to open air, that's pretty neat that the vacant anchor spaces have been able to find new tenants. Usually it's hard to find one replacement, let alone three!
ReplyDeleteI agree and I think that speaks as to why they want to redevelop the mall. The market is there.
DeleteEastern Hills is such a paradox. It's arguably located in the wealthiest section of town, was home to every major anchor store during the retail hey-day, is located inside one of the top 2 busiest retail corridors in the area, and yet, has struggled for decades. Even before Galleria, Boulevard was always considered the more successful and key mall versus EH. I think it was always located too far away to draw from the entire area and it never had much of a unique draw to differentiate it - AM&A's, Sears, JCPenney, Hengerer's/Sibley's/Kaufmann's all had multiple locations around the area and Eastern Hills wasn't offering anything different than Boulevard, McKinley, Galleria, or even Seneca and Thruway going back.
ReplyDeleteVery true. Though by today's standards, this mall is actually doing pretty well.
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