Towamencin Shopping Village: a strip mall, all dressed up for a date, but not a single suitor. (MONTAGE)

I’ve featured more derelict malls and shopping centers than the average reader can shake a selfie stick at.  (An apt reference, since the oldest chroniclers of struggling retail—the sites DeadMalls.com and LabelScar.com—haven’t received updates since the popularization of the selfie stick.  But they were great sites when I first started blogging!)  As far as depressed commercial real estate is concerned, the Towamencin Shopping Village in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania shouldn’t be anything special.  And it really isn’t, both within and beyond the context of my portfolio of documenting distressed retail real estate.  But something distinguished it for me back in 2016, when I took these photos.  I held off writing about it because more interesting topics took priority.  But I’m succumbing to that temptation now, almost seven years later, for two factors: one old, one new.  The old factor was what really caught my fancy as I drove through mostly unfamiliar suburban terrain during that long summer evening in August: there it was, a generally tidy looking shopping center in Towamencin Township, the heart of suburban Philadelphia in Montgomery County, long defined as a bastion of affluent suburbia.  Towamencin Township may not be the richest part of this township (always ranked among the top 100 wealthiest in the country) but it’s confidently middle and upper-middle, with poverty rates generally well below 3%.  Not a distressed area in the least, yet it featured a community shopping center about 95% vacant.

But the other factor—the new factor—is that I decided to revisit Towamencin Shopping Village again, this time virtually, thinking recent local news media or Google Street View walkthroughs might reveal signs of reinvestment.  But no—it’s in even worse shape.

This place must be a paradigm in deferred expectations: a property that enjoys good or even very good investment with little to no evidence of a return.  The only impetus I can see is that it’s probably a community of active, committed homeowners who would collectivize and lobby for change if the strip mall ever lapsed into visible desuetude.  

Though it’s hard to elicit any deeper sociocultural analysis of Towamencin Shopping Village than I’ve already provided, I’ll do my best to speculate on why it has languished for so long, and why its day of reckoning may still be years in the future, or tomorrow.  But first, since this is a montage article, the photos:

And now a bit more background on this strangely-named place that is likely unfamiliar to anyone more than twenty miles away from it.  It’s one of three municipalities in Pennsylvania to adopt the Lenape word, though the other two use a slightly altered “Towamensing” spelling.  The “shopping village” sits at the corner of Forty Foot Road (PA State Route 63) and Allentown Road (State Route 1001) in a township almost perfectly in the center of its rectangular shaped county.  Given its location, I’d assert that Towamencin Township and its affiliated nearby communities (the Borough of Hatfield, the Census Designated Place of Kulpsville), and the much larger borough of Lansdale) are outer-suburban but not exurban.  Though most of the arterial roads have sidewalks, the population density does not support much walking; there’s nothing very close within the fifteen-minute stroll that the typical person finds acceptable.  Neither of the two roads that comprise the intersection for Towamencin Shopping Village would prohibit bicycling, but there’s nothing in their design that accommodates it—neither desirable nor an imminent threat.  Looking at the age of the development and telltale architectural features, I’d estimate that the township really exploded in population in the 1970s.  (The decennial census supports this speculation; the township grew over 130% in that decade.)  The 70s were not a time of great pedestrian accommodation; most new housing developments didn’t include sidewalks.  It’s an auto-oriented area, and commercial nodes support this method of transportation; the nodes almost exclusively feature strip malls.

But Towamencin Township is resolutely stable, middle-class (if not upper middle class) and most evidence would suggest it doesn’t suffer from an oversupply of commercial/retail space; the township zoning map shows about 90% of the land area is designated for varying densities of single-family residential.  And, most importantly, the architectural features of the Towamencin Shopping Village suggest that it’s hardly a relic.  Online research reveals that the strip mall first broke ground in 1952, at the start of a decade that witnessed a smaller surge in population—a precursor to the greater surge in the 1970s.  But the aesthetics of the Towamencin Shopping Village clearly date from a later era than the 1950s.

The ornamentation—faux gables and dormer windows that pantomime a second floor, columns, a bricked veneer in the lower half, and (most telling of all) those teal awnings—are all redolent of 1990, give or take a year.  So the entire property received a head-to-toe renovation at some point, and since the premises show little evidence of deterioration, the property management company still cares for the façade despite the overwhelming vacancy.

The good condition of the premises only amplifies the mystery.  Landscape is tidy and abundant, the lighting at twilight seems to work, pavement looks almost completely free of potholes, scarcely any litter to be seen.  If Towamencin Shopping Village received such a thorough update and remains well maintained, why is it so empty?  The label scar for the Rite Aid in the above photo may have more to do with the fact that, at the time I took these photos (late 2016) the brand was in the midst of hotly contested merger with Walgreens, the latter of which sought to acquire as large of a percentage of the Rite Aid as it could, without running afoul of the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust concerns.  It was a time of volatility for the company.  Then again, the ugly, squat, difficult-to-read entrance sign suggests that the Rite Aid was already long gone.

Half the businesses on this backlit sign were already gone at the time. But is there any explanation for all the other vacancies?

About all that survived at the time were small in-line tenants:

Postman Plus is a packaging supply store—a small scale equivalent to a UPS Store.  The location in this photo has since closed; I only count three left, all in the Baltimore area.

The Store Outfitters is probably the tenant the comprises the largest floor space.  A clothier exclusively for men, it originates from the same time the developers first broke ground on the Towamencin Shopping Village, making it one of the strip mall’s first tenants and clearly its most loyal.  Well, it originated: the owner announced The Store’s closure two years ago.

Still operating in 2016, this Subway restaurant and the dry cleaners have both since closed.

The only strength remaining at Towamencin Shopping Village comes from the outparcels, and even that’s dubious.

Spice Kitchen, an Indian restaurant that apparently offered table service, had slick lighting and a smartly conceived logo.  It looks like it occupied a restaurant site that intended to offer drive thru service, though it’s unlikely Spice Kitchen ever did.

Needless to say, it still closed a couple years ago, about the same time as The Store Outfitters.   So did a Boston Market that was still open back in 2016 but is no more.  (This wave of closures may have a single explanation, which is forthcoming.)  And this outparcel, ostensibly intended to accommodate a bank, hasn’t boasted a tenant for quite some time.

Maybe it was the First Priority Bank, placed upside-down and backwards in the featured backlit entry sign.

One of the few surviving businesses is a Wendy’s.

A Wells Fargo and a Verizon reseller also seem to endure, with frontage adjacent to Forty Foot Road.  None of the tenants fronting Allentown Road are open, which isn’t all that surprising; the topography of the area makes the shopping center far less visible for motorists approaching from that direction than along the flatter Forty Foot Road.

Towamencin Shopping Village looked bleak when I visited over six years ago, and, despite the fact that current owner Philadelphia Suburban Development Corporation (PSDC) has announced plans to rebrand and redevelop the site into an “entertainment lifestyle overlay district”, it failed to reverse an image of continual decline.  At the very least, the announcement did help PSDC negotiate a conditional use request with the Township Board of Supervisors to lure well-known health club Planet Fitness to the shopping center, a large tenant that no doubt helps fill the cavernous parking lot during peak periods.  I’ve referred to Planet Fitness in the past as “budget-minded”, indicating that the company typically seeks depressed real-estate, where the high vacancy guarantees rock-bottom leasing rates.  Planet Fitness takes up considerable more floor space than anything else I’ve featured, at least since The Store Outfitters closed.  Beyond that, more recent Google Street View photos suggest that Budget Rent a Car leases a portion of the parking lot to store its commercial vans.  I can’t determine the basis for this contract, but it no doubt offers PSDC a bit more revenue.  But is it enough for a strip mall that can’t stop shedding tenants, even when the surrounding housing developments are doing just fine?

Apparently Towamencin Shopping Village is a bit of a joke in the surrounding community.  It has retained this “manicured ghost town” appearance for many years; aside from faded paint stripes on the parking lot, the only evidence of its poor state is the vacancy itself.  It looks far better than any 90% vacant shopping center I’ve seen before.  It’s a belle waiting eternally for the next ball. The strip mall’s lingering vacancy is even more puzzling when one considers that, just a quarter mile up the road, a much larger shopping node straddles all corners at the intersection of Forty Foot Road and Welsh Road.  Perhaps this bigger “shopping town” overshadows the Shopping Village?  Both have been around for quite some time, but the bottom only dropped out of Towamencin.  This neighboring shopping center, just outside the Towamencin Township municipal boundary, seems to be thriving: Kohl’s, Aldi, Ross Dress for Less, Lowe’s Hardware, ShopRite, and at least a dozen outparcels and smaller in-line tenants.  Known as Ralph’s Corner, it underwent a significant face lift back in late 2017 and 2018, much of it rebuilt down to the wall studs—an investment that breathed new life and lured more tenants, while retaining many that were there before.  But it was never as vacant as Towamencin Shopping Village is today, and Towamencin had faltered long before Ralph’s Corner’s reconstruction; after all, these photos in this montage date from summer 2016.

Meanwhile, the articles I’ve researched indicate that, in the (distant) past when Towamencin Shopping Village was thriving, it hosted solid tenants: Eckerd Drug and Sears Hardware were anchors for many years, as was Genuardi’s Market, a grocer with a handful of locations in the Philadelphia metro (but never the city itself) that shuttered its last location in 2015.  And, as previously indicated, all evidence suggests that this is a stable area in general, without even a hint of localized job loss.  Which is why the various proposals to resuscitate it over the years have shifted the community’s response from optimism to derision: just last summer PSDC announced an unnamed grocery store tenant, which their renderings prompted social media buzz to conclude that the Shopping Village might soon greet an Amazon Fresh.  Chipotle and Mattress Warehouse also secured approvals to relocate at the former Boston Market. 

Nearly a year has passed, and not one has materialized.  Given the current state of Amazon Fresh, locals have reason to scoff.  A November article suggests the developers are facing challenges from the enduring aftermath of COVID, as well as lagging permitting from the Township.  No doubt these assertions are at least partially truthful: a homegrown Youtube survey of the site in spring 2021 (right before Planet Fitness opened) suggests that remaining tenants like The Store Outfitters and Spice Garden closed through eviction (something I cannot confirm), but the video evidence shows a complete reinvention similar to Ralph’s Corner down the street.  Gone at last are the faux gables, the clock tower, those teal awnings.  The new aesthetic remains as much a mystery as the tenants.  It’s a fine site for a medium-sized neighborhood shopping plaza, and if anything the area is gaining population (slightly).  But in an era when bigger and glitzier malls are facing similar struggles, who can guarantee that an attractive but humble little strip mall can reinvent itself?  Even after a Cinderella-like transformation, our heroine may need a bit more than a fairy godmother to get her away from Anastasia and Drizella.