In August 1990, Massena got an enclosed mall on Route 37. Half a million square feet, with Hills at one end, Sears at the other, JCPenney in the front, and Chappell's in the back.
Hills department store opened and created 200 new jobs. The project cost $50 million to build. Nothing like it existed anywhere else in St. Lawrence County.
On busy weekends, a solid share of cars in the parking lot had Ontario plates - the Canadian dollar was strong in the 1980s, and Massena was about 15 minutes from the bridge at Cornwall.
Families from Stormont, Dundas, and Glengarry counties came across to shop at stores they didn't have nearby.
The mall served a trade area of roughly 200,000 people spread across St. Lawrence and Franklin counties in New York and three counties in Ontario.
For many years, Route 37 was an area with factories like Alcoa and Reynolds Metals, and now there was a large shopping center right in the middle of it.
Why Heritage Companies Bet on Route 37
The Heritage Companies of Syracuse drew up the plans in 1988. The proposal called for 88 stores and about 1,300 retail jobs.
The location made sense for two reasons. Massena's industrial employers were still running full shifts, so local workers had money to spend.
The Canadian dollar was also strong, making cross-border shopping worthwhile for Ontario families.
Some local officials had reservations - a mall that size on the edge of town could pull business from stores closer to the village center, and a few of them said so publicly.
Sears signed on in April 1989. By December of that year, newspapers were already running the opening date - August 1, 1990 - while construction was still going on.
Ownership moved after the opening, from Heritage Co. to AP Massena Partners, then to Carlyle Development Group in 2003.
Carlyle brought in General Growth Properties to manage the building starting in February 2004.
Year-Round Rink, 55 Stores, July Fireworks
For about two decades, the mall ran the way it was designed to. By 2009, 55 stores and services were operating inside, anchored by JCPenney, Sears, Bon-Ton, and TJ Maxx.
The St. Lawrence Centre Arena stayed open year-round, not just in the winter months.
Every summer, the parking lot held an Independence Day fireworks show. Santa and the Easter Bunny both had their regular spots in the calendar.
SeaComm Federal Credit Union and Mix 96.1 sponsored a Kids Club that brought families in throughout the year.
Canadian visitors accounted for 20 to 30 percent of total traffic through most of the 2000s.
Even in 2009, when the Seaway International Bridge temporarily closed and the broader economy slowed, Canadian traffic still held at about 20 percent of total visitors.
The 2008 visitor count had been the highest the mall recorded in four years.
Sears Left, and Seven Storefronts Sat Empty
Sears announced its closure in October 2014. That same month, the mall went on the market. A reporter who walked the building counted seven empty storefronts.
The tenants still in place weren't the kind that anchor a shopping mall - a post office, a doctor's office, a wood stove shop, gyms, hair salons.
Massena Town Supervisor pointed to two things making the situation harder: the Canadian dollar had fallen, taking away the exchange-rate incentive for Ontario shoppers, and major local employers had cut back heavily.
The General Motors plant in the area had shut down. Alcoa had significantly reduced its local workforce.
Hundreds of manufacturing jobs had left the region, and the wages that had supported the mall since 1990 were gone with them.
The town arranged a 40 percent cut in the property's tax assessment to make it more attractive to a buyer.
Canadian shoppers who still came described finding less to buy on each visit. TJ Maxx had already moved out of the mall, though it kept a store in Massena.
A Canadian-Led Group Bought the Mall in January 2017
The mall's ice rink went dark in August 2016 after mechanical failures. A smaller Sears Hometown Store took the original Sears place, but that operation also ended in 2017.
In January 2017, a three-member buying group that included Montreal-based Shapiro Group purchased St. Lawrence Centre for a reported $2.88 million, a tiny fraction of the mall's original, roughly $50 million development cost.
The new mall manager organized a vendor show that brought in 40 small businesses and spoke openly about turning the old arena area into a place for indoor sports, concerts, a flea market, and open-mic comedy nights.
JCPenney and Bon-Ton were still in place. Payless closed in 2017 in a company-wide bankruptcy.
In November 2017, Bon-Ton announced it would close its Massena store. Local reporting said the Bon-Ton and Hannaford closings together would affect about 100 workers.
The following July, a field-turf sports venue with seating for 1,300 opened in the former arena space.
From Vaccine Clinics to Warehouse Docks
In March and April 2021, the former TJ Maxx space was used for Moderna vaccination clinics.
By early 2023, Groupe Shapiro had gone to the Massena town planning board with a plan to turn 160,000 square feet - about one-quarter of the building - into warehouse space.
New loading docks were being added. The food court was set to be torn down. Items stored in the building would be shipped to Amazon, Walmart, and other large retailers.
St. Lawrence County's 2022 economic development strategy listed the mall as a troubled property and pointed to three main reasons for its decline: the growth of online shopping, border closures to Canadian customers, and the effects of the pandemic.
By the end of 2023, more than 200,000 square feet of the building had been turned into industrial space.
In late April 2024, the inside of the mall closed to the public. JCPenney stayed open, but customers entered through doors facing the parking lot instead of going through the mall interior.
What the St. Lawrence Industrial Complex Is Today
Groupe Shapiro spent more than $1 million to remake the property for industrial use.
The work included high ceilings, wide open interior space, and loading areas for trucks. Columbia Frame Distribution was the first tenant to move in.
It took about 300,000 square feet in the part of the building that had once housed Hills, Ames, and the food court.
The property is now called the St. Lawrence Industrial Complex, or SLIC.
Its website presents it as a warehouse and industrial site with more than 600,000 square feet of space. The complex sits less than seven miles from the Canadian border.
Available units range from 29,000 square feet.
JCPenney is still there as the last retail store.
