Hunt Valley Towne Centre, formerly Hunt Valley Mall, is an outdoor shopping mall in northern

Baltimore County, Maryland Baltimore County ( , locally: or ) is the third-most populous county in the U.S. state of Maryland and is part of the Baltimore metropolitan area. Baltimore County (which partially surrounds, though does not include, the independent City of ...

with 58 stores. The development was constructed following the closure of Hunt Valley Mall (other than its anchor stores) in 2000. The new centre started operating in 2003. The anchor stores in existence today include Dick's Sporting Goods,

Burlington Coat Factory Burlington, formerly known as Burlington Coat Factory, is an American national off-price department store retailer, and a division of Burlington Coat Factory Warehouse Corporation with more than 1,000 stores in 40 states and Puerto Rico, with it ...

and

Wegmans Wegmans Food Markets, Inc. is a privately held American supermarket chain. It is headquartered in Gates, New York, and was founded in 1916 in Rochester. As of , Wegmans has 110 stores, mostly in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions. The ...

Wal-Mart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquarter ...

was located at Hunt Valley mall until late October 2007, when it moved two miles south to

Cockeysville, Maryland Cockeysville is a census-designated place (CDP) in Baltimore County, Maryland, United States. The population was 20,776 at the 2010 census. History Cockeysville was named after the Cockey family who helped establish the town. Thomas Cockey (1676� ...

. It was replaced by

Best Buy Best Buy Co. Inc. is an American multinational consumer electronics retailer headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota. Originally founded by Richard M. Schulze and James Wheeler in 1966 as an audio specialty store called Sound of Music, it was rebra ...

, which closed in May 2012 as part of a nationwide downsizing. Near a gazebo located in the main street area of the center, there is a memorial to

Chuck Thompson Charles Lloyd Thompson (June 10, 1921 – March 6, 2005) was an American sportscaster best known for his broadcasts of Major League Baseball's Baltimore Orioles and the National Football League's Baltimore Colts. He was well-recognized for his r ...

. Hunt Valley's official mascot was Hunter the Valley Bear prior to redevelopment.

Hunt Valley Mall

Hunt Valley Mall was planned as early as 1979, but its construction was opposed both by local residents, citing spreading suburbification and the potential for runoff into Loch Raven Reservoir, and by the Baltimore County government, who preferred that development be focused in Owings Mills and White Marsh. Despite this, and the Baltimore County executive at the time, Donald Hutchinson, refusing to attend the opening ceremony, the mall opened on September 17, 1981. It was developed by Myles H. Tanenbaum and Kravco Company of

King of Prussia, PA King of Prussia (also referred to as KOP) is a census-designated place in Upper Merion Township, Pennsylvania, Upper Merion Township in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, its populatio ...

, and designed by Leonard Kagan of

RTKL Associates RTKL was a global architecture, planning and design firm. The firm was founded in 1946 by Archibald Rogers and Francis Taliaferro in Rogers’ grandmother’s basement in Annapolis and grew to be one of the largest architectural firms in the world ...

. Some of Hunt Valley's "sister malls" were Valley Hills Mall, Beachwood Place,

White Marsh Mall White Marsh Mall is a regional shopping mall in the unincorporated and planned community of White Marsh, Maryland. It is one of the largest regional malls in the Baltimore metropolitan area, with 6 anchor stores and 134 specialty shops in . The ...

Charleston Town Center Charleston Town Center is an enclosed shopping mall in downtown Charleston, West Virginia. One of the largest enclosed malls in the United States to be located in a downtown shopping district, it has comprised more than 130 tenants on two levels ...

and

Stratford Square Mall Stratford Square Mall is a shopping mall that opened on March 9, 1981, in Bloomingdale, Illinois, a northwestern suburb of Chicago, Illinois, United States. The There are 6 vacant anchor stores that were last occupied by JCPenney, Carson Pirie Sc ...

, after which it was modeled. The mall had space for four anchor tenants, but

Sears Sears, Roebuck and Co. ( ), commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began a ...

and Bamberger's, which became

Macy's Macy's (originally R. H. Macy & Co.) is an American chain of high-end department stores founded in 1858 by Rowland Hussey Macy. It became a division of the Cincinnati-based Federated Department Stores in 1994, through which it is affiliated wi ...

in 1986, were the only ones to open, leading the mall to a fate that paralleled Seaview Square Mall in Ocean Township,

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

. Other major department stores were in negotiations with the mall, such as

Hutzler's Hutzler's, or Hutzler Brothers Company, was a department store founded in Baltimore by Abram G. Hutzler (1836–1927) in 1858. From its beginning as a small dry goods store at the corner of Howard and Clay Streets in downtown Baltimore, Hutzler's ...

, which was slated for the location across from the food court, and

JCPenney Penney OpCo LLC, doing business as JCPenney and often abbreviated JCP, is a midscale American department store chain operating 667 stores across 49 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. Departments inside JCPenney stores include Mens, Womens, Boys, Gir ...

. Hunt Valley Mall's non-anchor stores included Hair Cuttery, Chess King, CVS, Piercing Pagoda, Kay Bee Toys, Sun Coast Video, Listening Booth Music, Florsheim Shoes, Hess Woman's Apparel, Art Explosion, Merry Go Round, Hudson Trail Outfitters, Deb, Paul Harris, The Wild Pair, Sir Walter Raleigh Inn and others. There were two sets of escalators as well as a prominent glass elevator at the center of the mall surrounded by a fountain. Formerly the Hunt Valley mall, the space was re-established into what is current day Hunt Valley Town Centre. Small zigzag-shaped waterfalls were at opposite ends of the mall. When Macy's closed, the building was subdivided into Dick's Sporting Goods and Burlington Coat Factory on the upper and lower floors, respectively. The passenger elevator, freight elevator, and escalators inside the store space were removed prior to the stores moving in (one of the escalators was kept and reused). Once they did, the stairs at the rear mall entrance were replaced with escalators, which remained in place after redevelopment. Burlington takes up the entirety of the Macy's building's second floor.

Downfall and rebirth

Hunt Valley Mall never recovered from its inauspicious opening. Its success over the following two decades was limited, and as a result, many of the merchants failed by the end of the 1990s. Competition from the new White Marsh Mall, as well as Golden Ring Mall, Owings Mills Mall, Towson Town Center and

The Mall in Columbia The Mall in Columbia, also known as the Columbia Mall, is the central shopping mall for the planned community of Columbia, Maryland, United States. It has over 200 specialty stores and the anchor stores are AMC Theatres, Lidl, Main Event Entert ...

did not help matters either. This resulted in plans being made to convert the mall into an outdoor town center with

big-box store A big-box store (also hyperstore, supercenter, superstore, or megastore) is a physically large retail establishment, usually part of a chain of stores. The term sometimes also refers, by extension, to the company that operates the store. The t ...

s. WalMart opened during this period, taking up the second floor of the Macy's building next to Dick's. The mall finally closed in 2000, and demolition began to turn the former mall site into Hunt Valley Town Centre.

Hunt Valley Town Centre

Hunt Valley Town Centre opened in 2003 In October 2007, WalMart relocated two miles south to Cockeysville. The space was then occupied by Best Buy, but closed in May 2012.

Bob's Discount Furniture Bob's Discount Furniture is an American furniture store chain headquartered in Manchester, Connecticut. The company opened its first store in 1991 in Newington, Connecticut and is ranked 12th in sales among United States furniture stores acc ...

then took over the space in 2015. All three of these spaces utilized one of the original escalators from Macy's, traveling in the down direction. It resides in the current Bob's south entrance. On June 23, 2017, the original

store in the Hunt Valley Towne Centre, an original part of the Mall that was one of 235 properties

Sears Holdings Sears Holdings Corporation was an American holding company headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. It was the parent company of the chain stores Kmart and Sears and was founded after the former purchased the latter in 2005. It was the 20th-l ...

spun off into Seritage Growth Properties in 2015, closed, as part of

' announcement of closing 20 stores across the United States. In 2018, Part of the first level of the former Sears became

Michaels Michaels Stores, Inc., more commonly known as Michaels, is a privately held chain of 1,252 American and Canadian arts and crafts stores, as of January 2021. It is one of North America's largest providers of arts, crafts, framing, floral and wall ...

and

HomeGoods HomeGoods is a chain of home furnishing stores headquartered in Framingham, Massachusetts. It was founded as a small chain in 1992, and grew to include hundreds of locations throughout the United States. HomeGoods sells furniture, linens, cooking ...

. On December 7, 2020, it was announced that Ashley HomeStore will open a new location in the former Sears, expected to take up a sizable chunk of the second floor. On February 9, 2021, it was announced that OneLife Fitness would open a new 55,000 square-foot two story gym in the former Sears. Part of the new location will be built off of the existing Sears building. It will include a boutique studio for barre, spark and apex classes, a large cardio area, an indoor lap pool and a kid's club. A 310-unit apartment building is expected to break ground on one of the parking lots of the Sears building.

Transit connections

In 1997, the

Baltimore Light Rail Baltimore Light RailLink (formerly Baltimore Light Rail, and also known simply as the "Light Rail") is a light rail system serving Baltimore, Maryland, United States, as well as its surrounding suburbs. It is operated by the Maryland Transit A ...

was extended north from its then-terminus at Timonium station to

Hunt Valley station Hunt Valley station is a Baltimore Light Rail station located at the Hunt Valley Towne Centre shopping complex in Hunt Valley, Maryland. The station opened in 1997 as the terminus of a northern extension of the Light Rail system. It has a single ...

in the parking lot of Hunt Valley Mall. There were hopes that this would increase business to the struggling mall. Increased lighting, security officers and off duty police were added to ward off any additional crime. Prior to the light rail's extension, the mall was served by

Maryland Transit Administration The Maryland Transit Administration (MTA) is a state-operated mass transit administration in Maryland, and is part of the Maryland Department of Transportation. The MTA operates a comprehensive transit system throughout the Baltimore-Washingt ...

Bus Route 9. Today, this route operates to the nearby International Circle.

In fiction

Hunt Valley Mall was an inspiration for the fictional "S'Wallow Valley Mall and Pizza Court" in ''

Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie ''Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie'' is a 2012 American absurdist comedy film starring, written, directed, and produced by the comedy duo Tim & Eric (Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim) in their feature directorial debuts. The plot follows Heide ...

''.

References

External links

Hunt Valley Town Center on Google Street ViewHunt Valley Towne Centre website
{{Shopping malls in Maryland Cockeysville, Maryland Hunt Valley, Maryland Shopping malls in Maryland Shopping malls established in 2000 Baltimore County, Maryland landmarks Tourist attractions in Baltimore County, Maryland 2000 establishments in Maryland