Franklin Mall in Northeast Philly to reopen Friday after small fire last weekend
The mall, which opened as Franklin Mills in 1989, was closed after a small fire happened on Feb. 21.
Franklin Mall will reopen Friday after being temporarily shut down since a small fire last weekend at the once-popular Northeast Philadelphia retail destination, property management said Thursday.
The mall has been closed since a fire on Saturdaywithin a single tenant space, management said. The city Department of Licenses and Inspections “issued a temporary closure notice while required inspections are completed to ensure building safety and building structural integrity.”
Management said on Thursday that “following this due diligence Franklin Mall has officially been granted permission to reopen” from L&I.
Franklin Mall will be open for normal business hours, but the management requested “patience with the property’s appearance while teams are actively making repairs to the affected areas within the mall while preserving a safe environment for shoppers.”
The Inquirer reported in early December that Franklin Mall, which many locals still call Franklin Mills, was listed for sale and that the 36-year-old, 1.8-million-square-foot facility at Knights and Woodhaven Roads could be repurposed or demolished for non-retail uses.
The mall opened in 1989 to great fanfare as the largest outlet mall ever, with a zigzag-shaped, one-story-tall concourse that stretched for 1.2 miles.
Franklin Mills once attracted 20 million visitors annually, but now the current version of the mall has less than a third of that traffic.
Under new ownership, it was renamed Philadelphia Mills, and most recently it has been called Franklin Mall, though a main entrance sign still says Philadelphia Mills.