Hanover Mall and the rewriting of a swamp
The story of Hanover Mall begins not with retail but with drainage. In the 1960s, the town of Hanover gathered to decide the fate of a tract locals knew as a swamp and a woodlot, land owned by the Simmons family.
The decision at the town meeting was clear: the growing town needed a supermarket, a bank, department stores, a movie theater, and a place for its growing population to spend money and time.
The "Rocky Swamp" was given a new purpose, and its importance as a natural area was quietly set aside to make way for businesses.
The Campanelli Tedeschi Trust acted fast. Construction equipment turned the wet ground into a flat area for a large mall about 732,000 square feet in size.
To fit a 125,000 square foot Sears, workers moved part of Third Herring Brook, changing the water flow to make room for the store.
By October 1971, Hanover Mall opened for the holiday season, with Zayre, Almy's, and Woolworth as main stores, and Sears joining a bit later as the biggest one.
Almost overnight, a swamp became the South Shore's enclosed living room: fluorescent, climate-controlled, and, for a generation, the unofficial answer to the question of where to go when there was nowhere else to go.
The mall's best years: big stores, fountains, and Pub 67
By the late 1970s, Hanover Mall had become the only indoor spot in the area. A 1977 ad promised "one stop shopping" with about eighty stores, offering the usual mall choices plus a few special extras.
Pub 67, a bar hidden in the back and renamed a few times, was a favorite hangout for locals.
In the early 1980s, Jordan Marsh opened as another major store, joining the other department stores already there.
The mall's halls filled with shops that anyone from the 1980s or 1990s would remember: Spencers, American Eagle Outfitters, Claire's, Bath & Body Works, The Children's Place, Deb Shop, Famous Footwear, Radio Shack, Foot Locker, FYE, GameStop, GNC, Hallmark, Hot Topic, Journeys, Justice, and plenty of jewelry, hair, and shoe stores that all seemed important.
Food and snacks were always nearby: McDonald's, Subway, Dairy Queen, Orange Julius, Friendly's, Uno Chicago Grill, Dunkin', Cuppy's Coffee, Moe's Southwest Grill, and more filled the air with the smell of fryer oil and the feeling of teenage freedom.
For many locals, the mall was a cozy place, sometimes a home away from home.
Renovations, new owners, and shifting names
Success led to changes. In 1993, the property sold for $38 million, and TA Associates Realty took over with plans to fix up the old mall.
JCPenney became a new main store, bringing its steady Midwestern style. The new owners built a food court and took out the central fountain, which they thought was not needed.
They also put in new surfaces, better lights, and new floors. Hanover Mall kept its name, but inside, it now had the bright, polished look that was popular in the 1990s.
The mall's main stores changed often. Almy's closed in 1987, and Filene's quickly took over and later expanded.
Zayre became Ames in 1989 after a merger, just one of many logo changes that decade. Jordan Marsh, once a big attraction, turned into Macy's before closing in 1996.
That building was torn down to build a new JCPenney wing, while Woolworth quietly left the mall.
By 1999, the mall got another set of updates, adding a 62,000 square foot JCPenney and redoing the whole space.
The food court, which never became as popular as they had hoped, was replaced by Old Navy. This change showed what people wanted at the time: affordable clothes instead of places to eat together.
Hanover Mall looked new again, even as the way people shopped was starting to change.
Big-box stores, recession, and a slow decline
The 2000s began with changes people had seen before, but ended with a deeper sense of uncertainty. Ames closed in 2002 as part of the chain's collapse, and Walmart took over its Hanover Mall location in 2004.
Walmart's arrival brought steady shoppers, but also represented the big-box trend that was hurting traditional department stores and smaller shops.
The mall got a new owner when Gregory Greenfield & Associates bought it in 2003 for $68 million.
New stores like Trader Joe's, Patriot Cinemas, Dick's Sporting Goods, Panera Bread, Petco, and Buffalo Wild Wings opened in separate buildings around the parking lot, and these often did better than the main mall.
In 2007, Walton Street Capital bought the property for $99 million, its highest value ever. On paper, Hanover Mall still looked like a strong investment in a busy area.
Then the Great Recession hit, and the internet became a big influence. Many stores chose not to renew their leases.
By 2010, so many spaces were empty that the mall was sold at a foreclosure auction for $37 million, a big drop from its highest value.
During the next six years under bank ownership, only two new stores moved in. The mall still opened every morning, but fewer people wanted to visit.
From the enclosed Hanover Mall to Hanover Crossing
The next big change started with a simple truth: the enclosed mall could not be saved. In 2015, JCPenney closed its Hanover store as part of a national cutback.
For a while, its old space was used as the Hanover Mall Event Center, hosting expos and SouthCoast Comic Con events under a roof built for shopping.
But the bigger pattern was clear. In 2019, Sears, Walmart, and Old Navy all said they would close, leaving Macy's as the only big store ready to see what happened next.
In 2016, the property was sold again, this time to PECO Real Estate Partners, also called PREP, for $40 million. PREP did not make small changes.
The company planned a complete makeover: about $250 million for an open-air, mixed-use project called Hanover Crossing, with grocery stores, entertainment, and almost 300 apartments built with The Hanover Company.
In 2017, the town approved a tax break and a bigger plan for the area, seeing the project as a rare chance for big change.
The indoor mall closed in January 2020. Demolition started in March, and by late April, the last inside parts were just piles of rubble where the parking lot used to be.
A few stand-alone stores - Dick's, Trader Joe's, Panera, Petco - stayed open and were included in the new plans.
As part of the bigger changes, a nearby dam was taken out, a small step for the environment that felt odd compared to the earlier choice to move Third Herring Brook for Sears.
The concrete had not always been the final answer.
Hanover Crossing: Market Basket, the Central Green, and 297 apartments
What emerged on the site from 2020 to 2022 was less a mall than a thesis about what might replace malls.
Hanover Crossing's retail component is laid out in a U-shaped configuration around surface parking and internal drives, designed to let drivers either dash into a single store or park and wander.
Roughly 600,000 square feet of open-air retail and restaurant space are wrapped around the "Central Green," a 30,000 square foot lawn and event space explicitly marketed as a town gathering place.
The tenant mix was assembled to signal resilience. Macy's stayed on as a legacy anchor. Market Basket opened an 80,000 square foot supermarket in March 2022, bringing with it hundreds of jobs and a regional following.
A Showcase Cinema de Lux multiplex and Ryan Family Amusements entertainment complex added evening life. Barstow Tavern rounded out the first wave of food and drink.
Over the next few years, national and regional brands arrived or announced plans: LL Bean, Trader Joe's in a new configuration, J.Crew Factory, Sephora, Carter's, MB Fine Wines, 110 Grill, Sullivan's Castle Island, Evviva Trattoria, Playa Bowls, Cava, Chipotle, Buffalo Wild Wings, and Panera.
Along one edge, The Hanover Company built 297 high-end rental apartments, fully integrated into the project's branding as a place to "live, work, play." By early 2025, all units had occupancy permits.
The apartments created about 1,000 construction jobs across the project, with Market Basket employing around 300 people and the cinema about 100.
Online reputation metrics crowned Hanover Crossing Residences one of the top-rated multifamily properties in the country.
In September 2025, a 297-unit, four-building complex by that name was sold by The Hanover Company to AEW Capital Management for roughly $156 million.
Traffic counts, MBTA law, and what comes next
While Hanover Crossing promotes its vision of easy suburban living, the town has been tracking the impact.
Annual traffic reports for Hanover Crossing, recorded in 2024 and again in September 2025, show how many vehicles travel around Route 53 and the access roads.
This formal tracking recognizes that the new "live, work, play" center is already affecting local traffic.
The state has included the site in a bigger discussion.
After Massachusetts' MBTA Communities law, Hanover's planners made a 2024 report that imagined a 750-apartment project at Hanover Crossing, which would bring about 2,000 more people to the area.
Leaders from fire, police, schools, public works, and community development talked about concerns with having enough workers, water, and classroom space.
The report makes it clear that this project is only an idea. Its main purpose is to show how much the site could handle and how worried the town would be if someone actually suggested this plan.
In January 2025, First Watch, a breakfast and brunch restaurant from Florida, opened its first New England location at Hanover Crossing.
The 3,500 square foot space has a covered patio and a bar that serves people both inside and outside.
A few weeks later, the town's select board gave permission for alcohol and entertainment, so now daytime cocktails and recorded background music are allowed.
It will take years, not just a few updates, to see if Hanover Crossing becomes the next big success after Hanover Mall or just a step toward something else.
