These nonprofits called the shuttered Exton mall home. Now, some are struggling to relocate.
The mall, which abruptly closed in June, housed several nonprofits and community groups. Some are scrambling for new spaces.
Cristina Hartley watched her teenage son go from refusing to say more than two lines on stage to taking on the lead role in two performances, thanks to the confidence he built through theater production nonprofit, Arts and Athletics Club.
Now, Hartley, who serves on the organization’s board, is worried about what future holds for the all-ages theater group. The nonprofit, officially founded in 2019 after starting as a high school senior project, was based for roughly four years in the Exton Square Mall, and lost its space when the mall closed its doors in June. The group has since struggled to find a new home and will be soon be forced to take a hiatus until a new location is secured.
“The arts are always the first program to be cut out of schools, and there’s always a lack of budget to have that in schools or to expand these programs in schools, and we want everybody to have access to anything art-related, whether that’s drawing or trying to sing or trying to perform,” said Hartley, who has been involved with the nonprofit for six years.
“We know that there’s a space out there. There’s a landlord out there willing to work with a small nonprofit. We just haven’t found it yet,” she said.
The roughly 1-million-square-foot Exton Square Mall officially closed June 30, amid a legal dispute between the property’s current owners and the local officials over plans for redevelopment. That effort is still in court.
For years, the mall declined from traditional retail, with only a handful of stores left when it shuttered after five decades. It was Chester County’s only enclosed mall.
But even as the mall’s staples dwindled, other organizations — nonprofits, a robotics club, a fencing center, and more — occupied the space, drawing what business leaders said was significant foot traffic.
In June, those still left at the mall received notice that they would have to be out by the end of the month. For nonprofits like the Arts and Athletics Club without robust budgets to quickly relocate, the abrupt end put them in a bind.
The Arts and Athletics Club was in the midst of two productions when its leaders learned they would have to vacate, said Chris Hutelmyer, executive director. They took June to move their things out, depositing belongings in people’s garages, and started the real estate hunt in July.
Their performances, “Oh Happy Day” and “Twisted Tales,” went on, albeit under changed circumstances, with one held in a park. After holding a summer bash Saturday, the organization will be on hiatus until it finds a space, Hutelmyer said.
The mall had been perfect for the group. An old Aéropostale served as its mini black box theater for four years. The former clothing store had no windows, which worked well for staging 10 productions each year, and it was accessible with ample parking. There were bathrooms, dressing rooms, and storage space. And it was a central location for its all-ages community, accessible from Malvern to Downingtown to Coatesville.
Trying to find a comparable space for the Arts and Athletics Club within East and West Whiteland Townships has proven to be more difficult. But its leaders said they want to stay in the area, continuing to provide programming for participants from ages 7 to 70. The mall was the organization’s first permanent location, after performing in parks, libraries, and other community spaces.
The theater group, which offers its programming for free or little cost, has a limited budget for renting or altering a space to fit its needs. Another challenge has been finding an available space that’s the right size: about 1,800 to 3,000 square feet of open space.
They’ve looked at retail locations, warehouses, churches and investigated partnering with community centers.
“We’ve been striking out pretty much everywhere that we’ve been looking,” Hutelmyer said. “It’s just been hard to find a direct match for what we need.”
It was a similar scramble for The Wardrobe, a nonprofit thrift store that accepts and sells secondhand clothing and also provides free clothes to those in need, after having to abruptly move out of the Exton mall.
Racing to find a new space to avoid laying off any employees, executive director Sherri Cole said she enlisted a real estate agent but struggled to find something affordable that also hit the right marks.
“Everything had to go out of the mall; it’s not like we could be like, ‘OK we’ll go dark and we’ll move things when we find a new location,’” Cole said.
By early July, The Wardrobe secured a pop-up location in the Plymouth Meeting Mall.
And this month, the nonprofit found a new, permanent home in the Lincoln Court Shopping Center in Malvern, about a 10-minute drive from the old Exton location. Cole anticipates the store will open by October.
Still, for both The Wardrobe and the Arts and Activities Club, it was hard to lose the Exton mall.
Out of The Wardrobe’s five locations in the Greater Philadelphia region, the Exton mall location was its second largest site for foot traffic and retail sales last year, Cole said.
It proved that people would still show up to a “dead” or “dying” mall if there was something they needed, Cole said. And it was meeting a need.
“There need to be spaces in the suburbs where everyone feels welcome, and often, the class divide in the suburbs is really stark,” she said. “It’s great that we’re able to find something that is still within the Exton, Malvern neighborhood where we can be providing these services because even within the suburbs, poverty is really often overlooked.”
For Hutelmyer, still searching for somewhere or the Arts and Athletics Club to land, it was sad to see the community space like the mall go.
Housing a constellation of community organizations, the mall “wasn’t what people really expected it to be,” Hutelmyer said.
“But as it transformed into the community space, at least while we were there, it was still serving a lot of good, and I think that not being there is a big loss for the community, he said.
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