Coventry Mall on the Halderman Farm
The Shoppes at Coventry - which spent most of its life answering to Coventry Mall, and before that to the brisker, less sentimental Norco Mall - sits where Route 100 meets Route 724 in North Coventry Township.
Its mailing address, 351 W. Schuylkill Road, has the plainness of a place you could send a birthday card to, though few people mail anything to a mall unless it is a complaint.
Long before the pylon signs and the parking-lot geometry, this was the John Halderman farm, land once tied to Abraham Wanger.
This name survives the way so many local names do: in records, in recollection, in the faint stubbornness of maps. The site was always going to favor motion.
Downtown Pottstown had sidewalks, history, and shop windows. This property had the interchange, that modern device for turning drivers into shoppers without making anyone feel they have made a decision.
By the time it settled into its mature scale - 802,000 square feet of retail - the number was less a measurement than a claim.
Even the names told on it. "Norco" sounded like a project. "Coventry Mall" sounded like a destination.
"The Shoppes at Coventry" sounds like someone trying to persuade you that you are strolling, not just crossing asphalt.
The ground, meanwhile, has stayed unimpressed and unmoved, letting each era redecorate on top of it.
Norco Mall Opens to Suburban Appetite
Kurt Rostan and Seymour A. Friedman planned and built the first version of the mall. On October 5, 1967, it had its big opening.
But some stores had already started doing business, as if the mall could not wait to open.
Norco Mall was open to the outdoors, so shoppers walked between outside doors, carrying their bags through the weather and across the pavement, sometimes in good spirits.
Two main stores stood out in the first version. Sears was a familiar name across the country. Britt's Department Store was a local favorite with a wide variety of goods.
Thirteen smaller stores completed the lineup, including Thrift Drug and Pantry Pride, names that now seem like everyday habits turned into brands.
The open-air design showed the hopeful spirit of the suburbs: people could come and go easily. The bigger change was in how people acted.
Everyone expected to find parking. Downtown had shops along the street; Norco had big parking lots and a sense of reliability.
The mall started to draw shoppers away from old shopping areas and toward the highway, where it was easier to shop.
1974: The Roof Goes On, Movies Arrive
In 1974, Norco Mall enclosed itself. The open-air plan was swallowed by walls and a roof, converting the center into a fully enclosed, climate-controlled mall.
The promise was simple: the same temperature in July as in January, and no rain on your new shoes.
The expansion added a new anchor, J.M. Fields, and Fox Theatres opened a two-screen movie theater inside the mall.
Twenty new retail spaces were added, and the property started to feel less like a stop and more like a contained afternoon.
This was also when the mall's impact became unmistakable.
Through the 1970s into the early 2000s, it became the dominant shopping destination for thousands of residents, pulling retail traffic away from downtown Pottstown and toward Routes 100 and 724.
It was a local version of a national pattern: suburban centers siphoning energy from older commercial streets. Coventry Mall made the exchange feel comfortable, even festive, under fluorescent light.
Anchors in Motion: Hess's to Kohl's
By 1978, anchor turnover was already part of Coventry Mall's rhythm. Britt's and J.M. Fields closed their mall locations.
Hess's, the Allentown-based department store with a strong Northeast presence, replaced Britt's.
Jefferson Ward, the discount division of Montgomery Ward, took over the former J.M. Fields.
In 1979, Goodman Properties acquired the center. They renamed it Coventry Mall, making the place sound less like a project and more like a destination.
Another expansion followed in 1982, tuning the building for higher volume and longer visits.
More anchor movement arrived in 1985, when Pomeroy's was added. In 1987, Pomeroy's became Bon-Ton after the chain acquired the operation. That same year, a larger eight-screen theater was built outside the main building.
The old interior two-screen theater was converted into a food court, turning movie space into meal space and giving shoppers a new place to linger.
The Long Middle Age of Endless Store Swaps
After the big structural moves came decades of substitutions. The former Jefferson Ward space became Bradlees in 1985.
When Bradlees closed in 2001, the area was subdivided between Ross Dress for Less and Dick's Sporting Goods, a practical expression of how one big box becomes two medium ones.
The former Pomeroy's-then-Bon-Ton became Boscov's in 1994. The store had two floors and even had rooftop parking, though the rooftop lot would later be closed to the public.
The Hess's box proved especially itinerant. After Hess's failed to complete a 1994 deal tied to Bon-Ton's broader acquisition of its stores, the Coventry location closed.
The space became JCPenney briefly, then shifted to Bon-Ton, and finally became Kohl's in 2005, where it remained for two decades.
Ownership moved behind the scenes.
Goodman Properties eventually gave way to Stoltz Real Estate Partners, which held the property from 2004 to 2013, spanning the years when malls still felt inevitable while their economic foundation was already changing.
Receivers, Auctions, and the Sears Echo
Sears, one of the first big stores, closed its Coventry Mall location in April 2012, leaving a space that felt less like an empty store and more like a missing wall.
Coventry Retail LP stopped making loan payments starting April 1, 2013. In March 2013, Jones Lang LaSalle took over running the mall, showing that experts were now handling the mall's problems.
On September 19, 2013, the property was sold at auction to U.S. Bank National Association for $49.5 million, a sale pushed by lenders to pay off debts.
Jones Lang LaSalle kept running the mall after the auction, so the people who owned it were not the same as the people managing it.
In December 2014, Limerick Furniture opened in the old Sears space, trying to fill the large empty area with something that felt steady.
It was more of a living-room showroom than a department store, which made sense: Coventry was starting to make money from its space in new ways.
Pennmark's Revival Plan Meets the Wrecking Crew
On April 8, 2016, Pennmark Management Co. bought the mall from U.S. Bank, taking over a place with a lot of history but an uncertain future.
Pennmark promised to make things better by bringing in new stores and restaurants to fill empty spaces.
Gabe's opened on March 18, 2017, taking 45,000 square feet of the former Sears space. Jo-Ann opened on May 10, 2018, relocating from a nearby strip mall into a 14,300-square-foot store inside Coventry Mall.
By April 2022, Pennmark changed its plans: the indoor mall would be turned into The Shoppes at Coventry, making it an outdoor shopping center again.
The inside of the mall would close, and the main stores would only have doors on the outside, ending the indoor walking that had been part of the mall since 1974.
Big Phil's Bar and Grill opened in early 2022, where TGI Friday's used to be. Roses Discount Store opened in November 2022 in another part of the old Sears area.
The process of turning the mall into an outdoor center ran into problems. Reports in March 2023 said Pennmark ignored deals with tenants, local building rules, and permits, which led to several orders to stop work.
Interior Shuts; CubeSmart Takes the Core
On March 3, 2023, the interior of the mall was quietly closed to the public. The food court, created in 1987 when the old two-screen theater was converted, closed, and was later repurposed.
In 2023, CubeSmart self-storage was added in the former food court and interior mall space, turning the mall's old social center into a place for storing what people were not ready to discard.
Outside, the Shoppes began to behave like a different species. In 2024, Dick's Sporting Goods relocated from the property to Upland Square in Pottstown.
Anytime Fitness rebranded as Fit Life Fitness and expanded into an adjacent former mall space to include pickleball courts, transforming the gym into something closer to a recreation hall.
Piccolo's Italian Market opened in the outdoor shop area.
Anchor Losses and Kohl's Court Fight
In 2025, the tenant list began shedding weight. Kohl's announced on January 9 that its Pottstown store would close. The company publicly listed it among 27 underperforming locations slated to shut by April.
Other closures came faster. Roses Discount Store, which had opened in late 2022, closed in January 2025 after roughly six weeks of operation with gradual discounts.
Jo-Ann, the 80-year-old crafts retailer, entered bankruptcy and moved into liquidation; the Pottstown location at The Shoppes at Coventry carried an April 28, 2025, closing date.
The Kohl's exit did not stay purely commercial. Pennmark alleged that Kohl's stopped paying rent from January through April 2025.
The dispute ran through landlord-tenant litigation in Pennsylvania state court, including an April 11, 2025, judgment and a May 12, 2025, appeal.
On September 12, 2025, a federal judge allowed a landlord affiliate's breach-of-contract claim against Kohl's to proceed to discovery while dismissing other claims, keeping the core fight alive.
As of late 2025, Boscov's remains the primary retail anchor, still two floors strong; Gabe's remains open at the site; Fit Life Fitness stays active; CubeSmart occupies the old interior.
The future will likely resemble the past: another reinvention, another sign, and the same interchange patiently delivering cars.
