Towson Place, formerly Eudowood Plaza and Towson Marketplace, is an outdoor

shopping center A shopping center (American English) or shopping centre (Commonwealth English), also called a shopping complex, shopping arcade, shopping plaza or galleria, is a group of shops built together, sometimes under one roof. The first known collec ...

Towson, Maryland Towson () is an unincorporated community and a census-designated place in Baltimore County, Maryland, United States. The population was 55,197 as of the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Baltimore County and the second-most populous unincorpo ...

. Opened in 1962, it was redeveloped extensively in 1998. The shopping center's major stores include

Target Target may refer to: Physical items * Shooting target, used in marksmanship training and various shooting sports ** Bullseye (target), the goal one for which one aims in many of these sports ** Aiming point, in field artillery, fi ...

Walmart 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 ...

Weis Markets Weis Markets, Inc. ( doing business as Weis and stylized as weis) is a Mid-Atlantic food retailer headquartered in Sunbury, Pennsylvania. It currently operates 199 stores with over 23,000 employees in Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, New Jer ...

Marshalls Marshalls is an American chain of off-price department stores owned by TJX Companies. Marshalls has over 1,000 American stores, including larger stores named Marshalls Mega Store, covering 42 states and Puerto Rico, and 61 stores in Canada. Mar ...

Bed Bath & Beyond Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. is an American chain of domestic merchandise retail stores. The chain operates many stores in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Puerto Rico. Bed Bath & Beyond was founded in 1971. It is counted among the Fortune 5 ...

DSW Shoe Warehouse Designer Brands Inc. is an American company that sells designer and name brand shoes and fashion accessories. It owns the Designer Shoe Warehouse (DSW) store chain, and operates over 500 stores in the United States and an e-commerce website. T ...

PetSmart PetSmart is a privately held American chain of pet superstores, which sell pet products, services, and small pets. It is the leading North American pet company, and its direct competitor is Petco. Its indirect competitors are Amazon, Walmart, ...

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 ...

TJ Maxx TJ Maxx (stylized as T•J•maxx) is an American department store chain, selling at prices generally lower than other major similar stores. It has more than 1,000 stores in the United States, making it one of the largest clothing retailers in ...

, and Havertys. It is managed by

Kimco Realty Kimco Realty® (NYSE:KIM) is a real estate investment trust (REIT) headquartered in Jericho, N.Y. that is North America’s largest publicly traded owner and operator of open-air, grocery-anchored shopping centers, including mixed-use assets. The ...

History

Eudowood Plaza opened August 23, 1962. The open-air mall was developed by the supermarket chain

Food Fair Food Fair, also known by its successor name Pantry Pride, was a large supermarket chain in the United States. It was founded by Samuel N. Friedland, who opened the first store (as Reading Giant Quality Price Cutter) in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in ...

, which was an

anchor store In retail, an "anchor tenant", sometimes called an "anchor store", "draw tenant", or "key tenant", is a considerably larger tenant in a shopping mall, often a department store or retail chain. They are typically located at the ends of malls. Wit ...

along with

Montgomery Ward Montgomery Ward is the name of two successive U.S. retail corporations. The original Montgomery Ward & Co. was a world-pioneering mail-order business and later also a leading department store chain that operated between 1872 and 2001. The curren ...

and Woolworth. A

Best Products Best Products Company, Inc., or simply Best, was a chain of American catalog showroom retail stores founded by Sydney and Frances Lewis in 1957 and formerly headquartered in Richmond, Virginia. The company was in existence for four decades befor ...

was added in 1978. The Best building was one of the stores designed by

Sculpture in the Environment Site most often refers to: * Archaeological site * Campsite, a place used for overnight stay in an outdoor area * Construction site * Location, a point or an area on the Earth's surface or elsewhere * Website, a set of related web pages, typically ...

(SITE) for that chain, featuring a 450-ton

masonry Masonry is the building of structures from individual units, which are often laid in and bound together by mortar; the term ''masonry'' can also refer to the units themselves. The common materials of masonry construction are bricks, building ...

facade tilted at a 35-degree angle. In 1981, Bramalea Limited bought the mall. The company spent $9 million to enclose the concourses and add discount retailers. It was at this point that the center was renamed Towson Marketplace. As part of these renovations, the Woolworth store was replaced with

. Despite these renovations, the mall remained poorly tenanted in the 1990s, and lacked visibility from nearby Joppa Road. Bramalea sold off the mall in 1991. By December 1995, the mall was under the ownership of Talisman, who proposed to demolish most of the structure. By year's end, the last inline tenants had closed, leaving only Marshalls,

Toys "R" Us Toys "R" Us is an American toy, clothing, and baby product retailer owned by Tru Kids (doing business as Tru Kids Brands) and various others. The company was founded in 1957; its first store was built in April 1948, with its headquarters loc ...

, Montgomery Ward, Best Products, and

Herman's World of Sporting Goods Herman’s World of Sporting Goods was a sporting goods retailer in the United States. It was founded by Herman Steinlauf in 1916 as a music store. Founded in 1916 by Herman and Eddie Steinlauf as a music store in lower Manhattan. The first s ...

. Four months later, the Best Products store was demolished to make way for construction of a

. Throughout 1997 and 1998, the center was largely demolished for conversion to a

power center Power center may refer to: *Power center (geometry), the intersection point of the three radical axes of the pairs of circles *Power center (retail) A power center or big-box center (known in Canadian and Commonwealth English as power centre o ...

, which included

Super Fresh SuperFresh is a supermarket brand owned by Key Food Stores which operates in New York City and its New Jersey suburbs. The company currently operates twenty supermarkets. The name previously belonged to a chain of stores run by A&P, based larg ...

Sports Authority Sports Authority, Inc. (formerly The Sports Authority) was an American sports retailer. At its peak, Sports Authority operated 463 stores in 45 States and Puerto Rico. The company's website was on the GSI Commerce platform and supported the reta ...

, and

along with the existing Montgomery Ward, Toys "R" Us, and Marshalls stores. Montgomery Ward later closed its store when the chain went out of business in 2001. A two-story portion of the new center featured Today's Man on the lower level and DSW on the upper level. In 2004, DSW moved its store down to the space vacated by Today's Man after that store closed, and

Filene's Basement Filene's Basement, also called The Basement, was a Massachusetts-based chain of department stores which was owned by Retail Ventures, Inc. until April 2009 when it was sold to Syms. The oldest off-price retailer in the United States, Filene's B ...

opened its first Maryland store in DSW's original location.

bought the center in February 2004, just as

moved into the space vacated by Montgomery Ward. Reflecting its former Montgomery Ward department store configuration, the Wal-Mart has two levels with escalators. Filene's Basement closed and became Havertys in 2012. Super Fresh closed in 2012 and became

a year later. On June 29, 2018, Toys "R" Us closed all their stores in the U.S. including the one at Towson Place.

References

{{Shopping malls in Maryland Shopping malls in Maryland Shopping malls established in 1962 Shopping malls established in 1995 Buildings and structures in Baltimore County, Maryland 1962 establishments in Maryland 1995 establishments in Maryland