The Grand Opening and the Promise of Progress
The doors swung open on October 2, 1973. A new kind of shopping experience had arrived in Pottsville, Pennsylvania.
Cressona Mall, planted along Route 61, wasn’t just another strip of storefronts—it was enclosed, air-conditioned, and built for convenience.
Malls like this weren’t just about retail; they were weekend destinations, a place to linger, browse, and leave with more than what was on the shopping list.
Hills, the anchor tenant, was the main draw. The discount department store chain had a strong reputation for low prices and a steady customer base.
Next door, Grant’s filled its aisles with everything from clothing to household goods.
A grocery store—Acme—rounded out the essentials. Smaller shops lined the interior, offering shoes, gifts, and the kind of specialty retail that made each mall feel like its own ecosystem.
The timing seemed perfect. The early ’70s were a boom period for suburban shopping centers.
Retail giants were expanding into smaller towns, betting on a future where shoppers would drive from their homes, park outside a single building, and find everything they needed under one roof.
Cressona Mall fits right into that vision.
Inside, bright fluorescent lights cast a glow over tile floors and storefront windows.
The scent of fresh pretzels and popcorn drifted through the walkways. The mall was built for families—kids tugging at their parents’ hands, asking for a toy, or stopping at the arcade.
The mall wasn’t flashy, but it didn’t have to be. It was practical, functional, and a place where people shopped because it made sense.
For a while, it worked. Cressona Mall held its own against larger retail developments in nearby cities.
The parking lot stayed busy, and tenants saw steady foot traffic. The question wasn’t whether the mall would survive—it was how long it could keep growing.
Expansion, Evolution, and the First Signs of Trouble
By the early 1980s, Cressona Mall still pulled in steady shoppers, but the cracks were forming.
In 1982, Grant’s—one of its original tenants—shut its doors. The space didn’t sit empty for long.
Laneco, a regional grocery chain, moved in, banking on mall-goers stopping for groceries after a day of shopping.
For a while, it worked. Foot traffic held. The mall still felt like a destination.
By 1995, the reshuffling picked up speed. In January, Acme—a fixture of the mall for years—switched to Insalacos, a rebrand that barely made a ripple.
A few months later, Laneco was gone, another dark storefront in a mall that was starting to show its age.
At the same time, Hills—the original anchor—expanded, taking over extra square footage as national retailers sought larger footprints to compete with the rise of big-box chains.
Staples moved in that same year, offering office supplies in a way that felt fresh compared to the department stores that had dominated the mall’s early years.
Competition outside the mall was growing. Walmart, Kmart, and other large retailers had expanded throughout Pennsylvania, changing the way people shopped.
Cressona Mall still had a mix of tenants, but some storefronts sat empty longer than they used to.
While the late ’90s brought steady business, the early warning signs were there: smaller retailers were struggling, and department stores weren’t pulling in the crowds they once had.
The 2000s didn’t bring much relief. The Surgery Center of Pottsville opened in 2006, a shift that hinted at what was to come—less retail and more alternative tenants.
Between 2007 and 2008, the mall underwent exterior renovations, an attempt to modernize the aging structure.
But a facelift couldn’t stop the larger trend. Shoppers were going elsewhere, and the cracks in Cressona Mall’s foundation were starting to show.
A Mall in Freefall
By the early 2010s, Cressona Mall wasn’t just aging—it was losing its place in Pottsville’s retail market.
In October 2010, CVS pulled out, leaving behind an empty storefront that stayed vacant for years.
When Goodwill moved into the space in 2014, it was clear that the mall was shifting away from traditional retail.
Things unraveled quickly after that. In February 2015, a burst water pipe flooded parts of the building during a cold snap, adding to the growing list of maintenance problems.
Later that year, financial trouble caught up with the owners. Wells Fargo foreclosed on the mall after an unpaid judgment tied to renovations.
At the time of foreclosure, Cressona Associates, the ownership group, owed $8.8 million on a $9.9 million mortgage.
The mall went up for auction on October 15, 2015. Wells Fargo took control. It wasn’t the kind of sale that brought stability—just a bank holding onto a distressed property.
By the time Planet Fitness signed a lease in late 2016, the mall had already changed hands in a way that made future investment uncertain.
In early 2017, Goodwill expanded its store, one of the few businesses growing inside the mall.
But it wasn’t enough to reverse the decline. Cinderella’s Closet, a formalwear shop, moved in in 2018, having relocated from the failing Schuylkill Mall.
Even then, it felt like Cressona was running on borrowed time.
At the end of 2019, new owners took over. Cressona Realty LLC, Cressona CH LLC, and Cressona Nassim LLC bought the mall for $8.05 million—less than its foreclosure price four years earlier.
Namdar Realty Group, a company known for acquiring struggling malls, was later named the primary owner.
Some tenants held on, but the overall trend was clear. Cressona Mall was no longer a retail destination—it was a property in transition, waiting to see what would come next.
New Owners, Same Struggles
In November 2021, Cressona Mall changed hands again. America’s Realty, known for snapping up struggling shopping centers, bought it for $16 million—a price that turned heads.
The new owners talked about investment, but retail wasn’t what it was a decade ago.
Malls were either reinventing themselves or disappearing. Cressona sat in the middle, waiting to see which way it would go.
Less than a year after the sale, another longtime tenant disappeared. The Surgery Center of Pottsville, which had operated in the mall since 2006, shut down in June 2022.
The closure left another hole in a property already struggling to attract steady foot traffic.
The next major loss came in early 2023. Alvernia University, which had used part of the mall as a satellite campus since 2009, moved out.
By then, Cressona Mall was mostly a mix of discount retail, fitness, and vacant space.
The days of a packed shopping center were long gone.
2025 and the Uncertain Future
In 2022, Cressona Mall got a long-overdue facelift. Fresh pavement covered the worn-out parking lot—a sign the owners weren’t throwing in the towel just yet.
Roof repairs followed, patching years of neglect. But new asphalt and shingles couldn’t fix the real problem. The mall’s future was still up in the air.
Retail had moved on. Power centers, big-box chains, and e-commerce had rewritten the rules.
America’s Realty still held the deed, but the mall sat unchanged—no bold plans, no reinvention, just a property waiting for its next move.
The land around Cressona Mall isn’t idle. In early 2024, a new retail project, Shoppes at Schuylkill, was announced, set to rise along Route 61.
Bennett Williams Commercial released renderings of a sleek, modern strip of storefronts—clean lines, fresh branding, the kind of look that suggests optimism.
The site, once home to the Mach’s Gut Beer Barn and the burned-out Days Inn, is getting a second chance.
But what does that mean for the mall next door?
As of 2025, the tension is clear. On one side of the parking lot, new businesses are being built, attracting interest and investment.
Inside the mall, the story is murkier. The question isn’t whether retail is growing in Pottsville—it’s whether Cressona Mall will still be part of it.
Cressona Mall isn’t empty, but it isn’t thriving either.
Its future depends on whether it can adapt or follow the same path as so many other small-town malls—slow decline, eventual closure, and redevelopment into something entirely different.