Neshaminy Mall to close this fall
The Bensalem Township mayor said the complex will soon be demolished.
The Philadelphia suburbs is losing another mall.
Neshaminy Mall, a 58-year-old Bucks County institution, will not live to see another holiday season, according to Bensalem Township Mayor Joe DiGirolamo, who said the complex will close by the end of October.
“It’s very bittersweet,” DiGirolamo said, “but the mall has been going downhill for the last few years.”
The 1-million-square-foot center has struggled with rising store vacancies and fewer customers, becoming fodder for TikTokers mourning their teenage stomping grounds.
It will be the region’s second mall to shut its doors this year, after Chester County’s Exton Square Mall closed in June.
Like in Exton, Neshaminy’s Boscov’s will remain open, DiGirolamo said, as will the AMC Movie Theater and Barnes & Noble bookstore.
A handful of other mall tenants must close up shop by the end of October, DiGirolamo said. In November, township officials plan to remove the mall’s dioramas, which depict key moments in U.S. history that took place in the Delaware Valley, as well as a bronze Native American statue, for preservation.
The mayor said the property’s owners, Lakewood, N.J.-based Paramount Realty, want to knock down the mall and build something new in its place, though the company had not applied for a demolition permit or submitted redevelopment plans as of Tuesday. Such plans would require approval by township council.
Paramount Realty declined to comment.
The Philadelphia region is home to more than a dozen indoor shopping malls. Some, including King of Prussia and Cherry Hill, appear to be thriving, while other centers like Neshaminy struggle.
A few have been transformed, or are in the process. In Media, Delaware County, the 1-million-square-foot Granite Run Mall was demolished in 2016 and replaced by a mixed-use town center with apartment buildings, new retail, and medical offices.
At the Neshaminy Mall site, near U.S. Route 1 and the Pennsylvania Turnpike, DiGirolamo said he’s “hopeful they are going to rebuild it in a way that most malls are rebuilt,” in the town-center style with housing and outdoor walkways.
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As for the indoor mall’s final days, the mayor said he expects them to be quiet, with some tenants vacating before their leases expire.
DiGirolamo, a lifelong resident of Bensalem, said he remembers when the mall opened in 1968. It was a “regional mall,” he said, that attracted out-of-town visitors.
A Philadelphia Daily News article about Neshaminy Mall’s opening called the $25-million complex “America’s most modern shopping center,” with the largest branches of Sears Roebuck and Co. and Strawbridge & Clothier at the time.
A few years later, the Oxford Valley Mall opened in nearby Langhorne. Oxford Valley, which is being partially redeveloped with apartments, will be Bucks County’s only enclosed mall once Neshaminy closes.
