shopping center
A shopping center in American English, shopping centre in English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English (see American and British English spelling differences#-re, -er, spelling differences), shopping complex, shopping arcade, ...
located in
Paramus, New Jersey
Paramus ( Waggoner, Walter H, ''The New York Times'', February 16, 1966. Accessed October 16, 2018. "Paramus – pronounced puh-RAHM-us, with the accent on the second syllable – may have taken its name from 'perremus' or 'perymus,' Indian for ...
. It opened in 1967 as a traditional indoor
shopping mall
A shopping mall (or simply mall) is a large indoor shopping center, usually Anchor tenant, anchored by department stores. The term ''mall'' originally meant pedestrian zone, a pedestrian promenade with shops along it, but in the late 1960s, i ...
. The mall slowly underwent a "de-malling" process over a period of several years prior to 2009, which resulted in the former interior portion of the mall gradually taken over by other stores and eventually sealed off, with each store inside the center having its own outside entrances.
The center is currently anchored 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 r ...
,
Amazon Fresh
Amazon Fresh is a subsidiary of the American e-commerce company Amazon in Seattle, Washington. It is a grocery retailer with physical stores in some U.S. cities, as well as in London and delivery services in the United States and various intern ...
Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble Booksellers is an American bookseller with the largest number of retail outlets in the United States. The company operates approximately 600 retail stores across the United States.
Barnes & Noble operates mainly through its B ...
bookstore operates in a building adjacent to the former mall, and several other businesses occupy smaller spaces.
The property is owned by Willner Realty of Pennsylvania. It has a
gross leasable area
In architecture, construction, and real estate, floor area, floor space, or floorspace is the area (measured in square metres or square feet) taken up by a building or part of it. The ways of defining "floor area" depend on what factors of the bui ...
of and is considered small by modern standards, with less than 15 stores at its peak.
Due to highly restrictive
blue laws
Blue laws (also known as Sunday laws, Sunday trade laws, and Sunday closing laws) are laws restricting or banning certain activities on specified days, usually Sundays in the western world. The laws were adopted originally for religious reasons ...
in
Bergen County
Bergen County is the List of counties in New Jersey, most populous County (United States), county in the U.S. state of New Jersey.Paramus, the Fashion Center is closed on Sundays, except for
Applebee's
Applebee's Restaurants LLC. is an American company that develops, franchises, and operates the Applebee's Neighborhood Grill + Bar restaurant chain. The Applebee's concept focuses on casual dining, with mainstream American dishes such as salads, ...
and the
Amazon Fresh
Amazon Fresh is a subsidiary of the American e-commerce company Amazon in Seattle, Washington. It is a grocery retailer with physical stores in some U.S. cities, as well as in London and delivery services in the United States and various intern ...
market.
History
Prior to the mall's construction, the area was native marsh and grassland where muskrats were trapped and sold for their fur by local residents. The mall opened on February 15, 1967. Hoping to capitalize on the affluent population of
Bergen County
Bergen County is the List of counties in New Jersey, most populous County (United States), county in the U.S. state of New Jersey.anchor store
In North American, Australian and New Zealand 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 ...
s:
Lord & Taylor
Lord & Taylor was an American department store chain founded in 1826 by Samuel Lord. It had 86 full-line stores in the Northeastern United States at its peak in the 2000s, and 38 locations at the time of its liquidation in 2021. The Lord & Tay ...
Associated Dry Goods
Associated Dry Goods Corporation (ADG) was a chain of department stores that merged with May Department Stores in 1986. It was founded in 1916 as an association of independent stores called American Dry Goods, based in New York City.
History
...
, then-owners of the Lord & Taylor chain, developed the mall proper.
The department stores were connected to each other by an indoor shopping arcade that was in length. There was also a free-standing Best & Company store in the parking lot that was built while the company was liquidating; the store instead housed a Britt's location and then became a
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 1948 in Washington, D.C.; its first store was built in April 1948, with i ...
store. After Toys "R" Us went bankrupt in 2018, the location at the Fashion Center closed along with its other two flagship stores in Paramus on Route 4 and the Babies "R" Us location on Route 17. The site of the former Toys "R" Us then became a seasonal Spirit Halloween store. In summer 2019, a
Big Lots
Big Lots Stores, Inc. (stylized as Big Lots!) is an American discount retail chain, specializing in the sale of closeout and overstock merchandise. Founded in 1967 as Consolidated Stores, the chain is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, and in ...
store replaced the former Toys R Us/Spirit Halloween space and opened.
The Fashion Center, which was designed in a contemporary style of decor, was prosperous through the 1970s. The center court included a fountain that was also used in the mall's former logo. But as the years progressed, other malls in the Paramus area, including
Westfield Garden State Plaza
Garden State Plaza (officially Westfield Garden State Plaza) is a shopping mall located in Paramus, in Bergen County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Owned and managed by Paris-based real estate management company Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, th ...
,
Paramus Park
Paramus Park is a shopping mall located in Paramus, New Jersey, United States. It opened in 1974, is owned by Brookfield Properties, and has a gross leasable area (GLA) of .
Description
Paramus Park is located on a plot of land between the ...
The Outlets at Bergen Town Center
Bergen Town Center (formerly known as The Outlets at Bergen Town Center) is a shopping center located in Bergen County, New Jersey, USA. The center consists of both an indoor mall and exterior outlying stores and occupies over 105 acres split be ...
began to capture its local market share. By the 1980s, this growing competition, coupled with the demise of B. Altman, led to a severe decline in the mall's fortunes. Retailers gradually moved out, leaving Lord & Taylor as its only anchor store and leading some to refer to the Fashion Center as a
dead mall
A dead mall, also known as a ghost mall or zombie mall, is a shopping mall that has low consumer traffic or is deteriorating in some manner.
Many malls in North America are considered "dead" when they have no surviving anchor store or successor ...
The Record (Bergen County)
''The Record'' (also called ''The North Jersey Record'', ''The Bergen Record'', ''The Sunday Record'' (Sunday edition) and formerly ''The Bergen Evening Record'') is a newspaper in New Jersey, United States. Serving Bergen, Essex, Hudson and ...
'', November 16, 2017. Accessed September 19, 2019. "The Fashion Center, once the pinnacle of luxury shopping in North Jersey, a mall that was dubbed the Fifth Avenue of Bergen County, also was written off as dead before coming back to life. It was the first mall in North Jersey to save the mall by de-malling it. It turned itself inside out, closing off the interior of the mall and converting the center into a collection of big box-style stores with separate entrances."
In 1996, the vacant B. Altman space was subdivided. Beginning in 2001, the owners of the Fashion Center began planning for the conversion of the mall to a traditional shopping center. In 2003, as part of the chain's expansion into the New York metropolitan area,
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 r ...
opened a store at the Fashion Center which necessitated the closure of some of the mall's entrances and the mall entrance of the former B. Altman store. Lord & Taylor followed suit the following year. Then in late 2008, the general mall entrance was closed then renovated and reopened in 2009, and later that year the mall added a
Fairway Market
Fairway Market is an American grocery chain founded in 1933 by Nathan Glickberg. The brand is owned by the Wakefern Food Corporation, whose flagship supermarket cooperative network is ShopRite.
The flagship Fairway location at Broadway ...
store to its lineup of stores, which took up a majority of the former interior space. This completed the Fashion Center's transition from a traditional mall into a collection of separate stores with their own entrances and no interior common space; all stores can only be accessed from the outside.
In September 2011, Lord & Taylor opened their first home store at the Fashion Center. It later closed in 2013 and was replaced by a World Market store in 2016.
In March 2020, it was announced that Fairway Market would be closing its doors at the Fashion Center soon and the space will be replaced by an Amazon Go market.
The official closing date for the Fairway Market location was supposed to be May 15, 2020, but the closing got delayed to the summer of 2020 due to the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...
.
On August 27, 2020, it was announced that Lord & Taylor would be closing all 38 stores, including the Fashion Center location. The store closed on February 27, 2021.
The Amazon Market opened on July 21, 2022.
In September 2022 it was announced that Bed Bath & Beyond will be closing by Fall 2022
The
Big Lots
Big Lots Stores, Inc. (stylized as Big Lots!) is an American discount retail chain, specializing in the sale of closeout and overstock merchandise. Founded in 1967 as Consolidated Stores, the chain is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, and in ...
location closed around 2023 and it was replaced by a
Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble Booksellers is an American bookseller with the largest number of retail outlets in the United States. The company operates approximately 600 retail stores across the United States.
Barnes & Noble operates mainly through its B ...