How The Block Northway in Pittsburgh Went From a Foreclosure Mall to a $100 Million Rebuild

In December 2012, a developer paid $12 million for a struggling 439,000-square-foot building on McKnight Road in Ross Township, just north of Pittsburgh. Two years later the upper level was down to two stores.

The building was Northway Mall, which opened in 1962 as the first fully enclosed shopping mall in Pennsylvania, built on top of a 1953 strip center that nobody bothered to demolish.

Horne's, Woolworth, G.C. Murphy, an A&P, and an aviary in the middle of the concourse.

Ross Park Mall opened a mile south in 1986, and the anchors started going. The 2005 rename to The Shoppes at Northway didn't help.

Neither did the upper-level teardown and open-air rebuild in 2007. Borders closing in 2011 finished it.

What went up instead was a $100 million, three-year rebuild, with Marshalls and Aldi open through the work.

Nordstrom Rack, The Container Store, and Dave & Buster's. BJ's followed on the old elementary school lot. Today it's called The Block Northway, and more than two dozen tenants are in it.

The day Northway Mall opened in 1962

On August 1, 1962, Governor David L.

Lawrence took part in the ceremony that opened Northway Mall with more than 60 stores at McKnight Road and Babcock Boulevard.

Northway Mall sat in Ross Township, Allegheny County, nine miles north of downtown Pittsburgh, and it was the first fully enclosed shopping mall in Pennsylvania.

A roof over the whole walkway. Air conditioning in August.

Northway Shopping Center had opened on the same site in 1953: an open strip of stores with an A&P and a wide parking field, built for a North Hills filling up with new houses and new cars.

When the James W.

Rouse Company and the architects at Victor Gruen Associates came to expand it, they left the strip standing and built the enclosed level above and behind it.

The $10 million job left the mall with 394,000 square feet of leasable space.

Horne's took the south end: 170,000 square feet on two floors, including a 20,000-square-foot budget department.

It was the biggest suburban store the chain had. Woolworth, G.C. Murphy and A&P filled the other large blocks.

The birdcage and 7,000 plants

The upper concourse had an aviary in it. People called it the birdcage, and it sat in the common area with seating around it.

Around that: skylights, planting beds, terrazzo and tile floors, and 7,000 tropical and semi-tropical plants.

The advertising line was "It is always Spring at Northway." A glass elevator ran between the levels, one of only three in the country at the time.

And then there was the hill.

The land climbs sharply from McKnight Road toward the back of the site.

Decades later, the redevelopment architect put the western side of the mall 23 feet above McKnight Road.

The 1953 strip faced the road down low. The enclosed mall sat up top on the higher ground.

So Northway worked as two shopping centers stacked at different heights, joined by escalators, stairs, ramps and that one glass elevator.

Some stores had good access from one level and were nearly invisible from the other.

Owner after owner spent money reworking corridors, escalators and entrances, trying to get shoppers to go up or down.

The first indoor mall in the North Hills

For more than 20 years, if you lived up here and wanted to shop without getting rained on, you went to Northway.

Horne's at the south end. Woolworth and G.C.

Murphy in other large blocks, the A&P for groceries, National Record Mart and Parklane Hosiery and dozens of clothing, shoe, gift and food shops along the upper mall, and the old 1953 strip still doing business below.

Other strip centers competed. For years, none of them had an indoor corridor in February.

The indoor common space turned into a meeting place for teenagers and families, especially in winter and in wet weather.

Shoppers came from across the North Hills and from towns farther north that could reach McKnight Road without driving into the city.

That ended in 1986. Ross Park Mall opened less than a mile south with several full-line department stores and a deeper list of specialty shops.

Close enough that a tenant could move there, sign a lease in a newer building, and keep serving the same customers it already had.

Anchors out, cage empty, 1988 to 1995

Horne's went in pieces. By the late 1980s the Northway store had been cut back to home furnishings, and in 1988 it closed.

G.C. Murphy had already left.

The empty spaces got whatever would take them. An eight-screen discount cinema opened in the old Murphy block in 1988.

A food court opened in 1990 with a few local operators, and it never became a reason to drive across the North Hills.

Then the rest. Woolworth closed in 1991. Herman's World of Sporting Goods was gone by 1993.

Dahlkemper's, the appliance chain that had taken part of the old Horne's space, went bankrupt in 1993.

Dick's Sporting Goods moved into the anchor area around 1994.

The birds went too. The aviary came out in 1994, ending one of the indoor garden attractions Northway had been selling since 1962.

McNeil Real Estate bought the mall in 1993 and finished a renovation in 1995 built around bigger stores: Marshalls in the old Woolworth space, Borders on the lower level and Old Navy.

When the property was offered for sale in 2000, it was 94 percent occupied, with the mall increasingly built around a handful of large tenants.

The Shoppes at Northway loses its roof

In 2005 the owner renamed the place The Shoppes at Northway. The idea was to give more stores their own doors to the outside.

Two years later, crews made it literal. The cinema closed in January 2007.

That summer, crews tore through a 58,000-square-foot section of the upper level, and part of the corridor that had been sealed against the weather since 1962 was opened back up to it.

The food court was dismantled.

Shoe Carnival moved in, an indoor children's play business took part of the old food-court area, and Aldi opened in its own freestanding building.

It didn't fix the vacancy. Old Navy and Value City closed in 2008. Borders kept people coming to the lower level until the chain liquidated in 2011.

A few businesses held on: Marshalls, PetSmart, Aldi, America's Best, Northway Shoe and Repair, Mamma Lucia.

Around them sat empty storefronts and corridors nobody walked.

The owner stopped paying the mortgage in October 2011. By that January the lender's claim had reached $23.7 million.

The property went into receivership in February 2012, and on May 7 it sold at an Allegheny County sheriff sale.

Bought for $12 million with the lights on

On December 3, 2012, LRC Realty bought the 438,900-square-foot complex for $12 million.

Six months earlier, the North Hills School District had agreed to sell it the closed Northway Elementary School next door, 6.5 acres, for $2.46 million.

Two days after the sale closed, LRC held a public meeting inside the mall. No signed tenants.

A list of maybes: shops, restaurants, offices, medical space, another grocery store, a hotel.

The building kept emptying while the plans were drawn. Dick's Sporting Goods closed on April 8, 2014 and reopened at McCandless Crossing.

By that October the upper level's big stores were down to Marshalls and Shoe Carnival.

The lower level had PetSmart, a shoe repair shop, a music instruction business and a salon, with the old Party City, Ritz Camera and Csonka Optical spaces sitting dark.

Then Mamma Lucia set December 31, 2014 as its last day, after 40 years at Northway.

The pizza shop had moved twice without ever leaving the property: lower level first, then the 1990 food court, then a space upstairs.

The rebuild into The Block Northway

The first commitment came before the first wall came down.

On April 7, 2015, Nordstrom announced a 40,000-square-foot Rack store, the first in the Pittsburgh area.

In June, the Ross Township Zoning Hearing Board cleared five variances for the reconstruction, covering building placement, parking and signs.

It also approved a temporary construction sign, 60 by 20 feet, reading "We got our mojo back."

The property stopped being The Shoppes at Northway and became The Block Northway.

Then three years of building with the stores still open.

Marshalls, PetSmart and Aldi traded straight through it, with the work moving in phases around them.

LRC spent $96.7 million between 2013 and 2018.

That bought nearly 1,500 linear feet of redone facade, new entrances and storefronts, and motorized glass that opens part of the common area in decent weather.

Old retail space on the lower level became an indoor garage with 100 spaces.

The tax help was messier. The school board signed on in December 2016 and Ross Township approved two measures in January 2017.

Allegheny County Council formally opted out in February 2017. Construction carried on without the county.

28 tenants and one 36,000-square-foot hole

The new stores opened in a run. Nordstrom Rack on August 26, 2016. The Container Store on October 8.

Saks Off 5th on October 13, in a two-level 36,000-square-foot space.

Ulta Beauty had already opened; DSW, Bassett Furniture, David's Bridal, Lands' End and Skechers followed.

Dave & Buster's opened on February 18, 2019 in 40,000 square feet and gave the upper level a use after the stores closed.

BJ's Wholesale Club opened on April 8, 2022, on the ground where Northway Elementary used to stand.

The restaurants turned over the way restaurants do. Wahlburgers closed in December 2023 after six years, and Sesame Inn moved into the space in 2025.

Crumbl Cookies took the old Jason's Deli site. Paris Baguette, Fajita Pete's and Nothing Bundt Cakes came in.

9 Yards Golf Lounge started a soft opening on October 3, 2025.

The hole is Saks Off 5th. It closed in early February 2026 and left 36,000 square feet empty.

The main center has 28 tenants across 354,900 square feet, with Marshalls and Aldi still in the building.

The indoor stretch of the upper level gets used for more than walking.

A student art show hung there between Lands' End and DSW earlier this year, and a school-supply collection is set for August 5.