The fire-damaged, temporarily closed mall in Camden County has lost nearly all its tenants.
Shoppers can’t even access the interior of the once thriving shopping center, formerly known as Echelon Mall. The storefronts are closed behind metal gates, caution tape and locked doors in eerie silence.
But somehow, the mall’s ’90s-era, old-school Boscov’s is still bustling with holiday shoppers.
The two-floor department store that anchors Voorhees Town Center continues to bring in customers even as the mall around it sits dark and empty.
Boscov’s lights are bright and the aisles are active. On a recent weekday afternoon, workers rang up longtime shoppers as Christmas music played and discount signs lined the store.
Almost nothing has changed inside the Boscov’s, built in 1992 to replace Stern’s, another department store that once anchored the mall. With its neon signs, mirrored ceilings and candy counter selling fudge, the Boscov’s still carries many of the nostalgic touches it had when it opened three decades ago.
“Boscov’s is thriving, it’s the store I go to for buying clothes,” said Kevin Barrett, a shopper and local resident.
Barrett is a former mall employee who once worked in McDonald’s, Remington and Things Remembered — all long gone. He remembers the mall in its heyday in the 1980s and ‘90s when the food court was packed on weekends, the hallways were bright and busy and Friday nights felt like a social event.
But even as the mall around it has gone dark, Barrett said he and other shoppers still find themselves returning to the Boscov’s. It’s one of the few anchors left from that era that still feels familiar and it’s the store that keeps him coming back.
Voorhees Town Center isn’t the only place where a department store is outlasting the mall around it. Several New Jersey shopping centers are anchored by old-school department stores that say they are committed to sticking with malls even as others leave.
At Hamilton Mall in Atlantic County and Livingston Mall in Essex County, Macy’s stays open while whole wings of the properties are vacant. And at Monmouth Mall — where a major makeover is removing part of the roof and shifting the center toward an open-air, mixed-use layout — Macy’s and Boscov’s continue to operate through the construction.
The same is true at Brunswick Square Mall in East Brunswick, where Macy’s and JCPenney remain open even as township officials move forward with plans to redevelop the 55-year-old mall with housing and entertainment offerings. At Moorestown Mall, Boscov’s continues to anchor the property as apartments rise around it.
Across New Jersey, many of their department stores insist they’re “not going anywhere” even as malls are on the verge of collapse, redevelopment or sit half-empty.
Retail shopping experts say the anchor stores are far from the draw they once were.
Department stores are largely being kept afloat by older shoppers. About 40% of Macy’s and Kohl’s shoppers are baby boomers, market researchers say, and most Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s customers are over 45, according to a 2024 Consumer Edge report.
That tracks with who you see walking through malls today — it’s far more likely to be your mom or grandmother browsing the racks at Boscov’s than a teenager. But department store chains say they’re not giving up on younger shoppers, leaning into new marketing, merchandising and digital strategies to try to bring them in.
“While many of our core customers have been shopping at JCPenney for decades, we’re excited to see a growing demographic of younger shoppers responding to our merchandising and marketing efforts and discovering the brand for themselves,” said Kim Florio, regional vice president for Catalyst Brands, JCPenney’s parent company.
Even as traditional enclosed malls continue to fade, multibillion-dollar department store chains are positioning themselves as survivors.
Many of their competitors are long gone. The days of shopping at classic anchor stores like Lord & Taylor, Steinbach, Stern’s, Gimbels, A&S, Fortunoff, Strawbridge & Clothier and Ohrbach’s are over.
Yet those still in business say they are sticking with New Jersey malls, no matter what.
When news broke last year that Woodbridge Center had been sold to a struggling investor, rumors about the mall’s future spread quickly. So Jim Boscov, the company’s CEO, personally visited the store to tell employees face-to-face that the department store planned to stay at the massive Middlesex County mall.
“He reassured them we are not going anywhere,” Boscov’s store manager Hillary Kessler said at the time. “This store is a very strong store for Boscov’s, so we’re staying at this mall and we will not be closing.”
From boom to bust
Enclosed shopping malls began rising in New Jersey in the 1960s, starting with Cherry Hill Mall in Camden County. They boomed through the ’70s and ’80s.
For young people at the time, malls weren’t just retail spaces but social hubs. Baby boomers treated mall trips as scheduled weekend activities, using malls to discover new styles, browse new merchandise and hang out with friends, according to James W. Hughes, a Rutgers University economist and professor.
By the 1990s, the U.S. had roughly 1,500 malls. And at the time, big-name department stores sat at the ends of every mall. They served as literal and figurative anchors, holding the malls in place as they drew in customers who filtered into the rest of the mall.
“They were really comprehensive emporiums that did everything,” said Hughes, who has studied New Jersey’s suburban economy for decades.
Shoppers could buy clothing, appliances and furniture in department stores, then eat lunch, get their hair done or even book someone to hang their wallpaper, all under one roof.
Boscov’s at Voorhees Town Center still carries some of those throwback touches, selling everything from discounted clothing and shoes to furniture and even operating a hearing-aid center that still takes appointments.
But that model has steadily weakened, researchers said.
Over the last 25 years, department stores were first undercut by specialty retailers and then by online shopping, causing many to disappear, Hughes said.
“Department stores were once the centerpieces of the malls. They were the big draw,” he added. “But they really started to have a hard time with all types of competition, and a number of them closed.”
A growing number of once-mighty anchors have vanished from New Jersey malls. Bamberger’s — the iconic Newark-based department store acquired by Macy’s — closed its flagship in 1992. At its height, the downtown Newark store had eight selling floors and elevators operated by white-gloved attendants.
Steinbach, the Jersey Shore’s posh department store, held on until 1999 before filing for bankruptcy and disappearing entirely. Bon-Ton bowed out in 2018, closing its Brick location and the store at the now-demolished Phillipsburg Mall.
Lord & Taylor, founded in 1826, survived nearly two centuries before shutting all U.S. stores in 2020. Its New Jersey locations spanned Willowbrook, Freehold Raceway Mall, Garden State Plaza and Menlo Park Mall.
And then there was Sears. Once America’s retail titan, before Amazon was Amazon. It closed its final New Jersey store at Newport Centre Mall in Jersey City in 2024. Today, former Sears locations across the state are being converted into everything from apartment complexes to churches.
Many department stores stopped keeping up, stopped listening and, eventually, stopped mattering to many, retail experts say. In the U.S., department store sales are projected to fall from $103 billion in 2018 to $81 billion by 2026, according to Coresight Research, an analytics firm.
Malls are moving away from relying on department stores to serve as the anchors of their shopping experiences.
Today, department stores are no longer the only attractions that draw people to malls — at least not the ones still hanging on. The new “anchors” are just as likely to be movie theaters, supermarkets, gyms, medical offices or entertainment venues, according to ICSC, a global trade association for the retail real estate industry.
“Department store anchors still exist, but today’s anchors aren’t about one type of retailer anymore,” said Stephanie Cegielski, ICSC’s vice president of research and public relations. “They’re about the curated tenant mix that fulfills a variety of needs within a community to draw consumers in.”
That shift away from traditional anchors is already visible across New Jersey. Once defined by department stores, many malls are now transforming into mixed-use hubs with apartments, restaurants and entertainment — from Westfield Garden State Plaza to Bergen Town Center and Brunswick Square.
Now, shoppers can bowl and play pickleball, throw axes, see a movie, meet for dinner and, in some cases, live in apartments build on the property, just steps away from it all.
But plenty of department stores say they are holding on and want to be part of the new, more nuanced, narrative as malls try to reinvent themselves.
‘We absolutely see a future’
Macy’s dominates New Jersey’s department store landscape, with about 25 locations statewide — far more than any other competitor.
In January, Macy’s announced it would close 150 underperforming stores nationwide by 2026 to “focus resources” and “prioritize investments.” In New Jersey, that included a location in a West Orange shopping center.
But the state’s other Macy’s locations, including those anchoring the state’s malls, were slated to stay open.
Macy’s executives say the department stores that remain are being redesigned for how people shop now.
“Mall culture has shifted,” a Macy’s spokesperson told NJ Advance Media. “Today it’s about having a memorable experience. Our stores are places where people can explore new things, enjoy traditions, or check out special events and pop-ups.”
The company said its strategy centers on strengthening the stores it’s keeping by improving staffing, refining merchandise and adding “experiential moments,” rather than relying on mall traffic alone. And its customers, the spokesperson added, are no longer just the older baby boomer generation that shaped mall culture decades ago.
“We serve all kinds of shoppers — from teens to grandparents, and from bargain hunters to people looking for something special,” the spokesperson said.
JCPenney, which operates 10 stores in New Jersey, says it’s seeing a similar trend: shoppers coming in not just to buy clothes, but to meet friends, attend events or try out trends they’ve seen on social media.
“We absolutely see a future for the department store,” said Kim Florio, regional vice president for Catalyst Brands, the parent company behind JCPenney.
“Where else in the mall can you shop for an outfit for a holiday party, pick up new home essentials for your house guests visiting this season, get your hair done, update your optical prescription, get your makeup touched up, and take family holiday card photos, all under one roof?”
“Nowhere else but JCPenney,” she added.
However, the financial reality behind the iconic JCPenney brand continues to shift. In January, JCPenney announced it is selling off 119 stores nationwide in a nearly $1 billion deal.
The move comes five years after JCPenney filed for bankruptcy. Four New Jersey stores were included in the sale: the locations at Freehold Raceway Mall, Newport Centre in Jersey City, Rockaway Townsquare and Woodbridge Center.
Despite the sale, the Texas-based company says it still believes in mall culture, so much so that it relocated its Wayne store to Willowbrook Mall in Passaic County just last year.
In a June interview with the global management consulting firm McKinsey, Bloomingdale’s CEO Olivier Bron said he believes the problem facing many department stores was never the model itself. Instead, it was that too many stores became indistinguishable from each other.
“Boring department stores are probably dead — but inspiring department stores have a bright future,” Bron said.
The luxury chain, now owned by Macy’s, now operates 12 stores in New Jersey, and Bloomingdale’s leaders say the future depends on standing out, not scaling back.
As for Boscov’s — the only major department store chain still privately owned by its founding family — the retailer has taken a more personal, almost old-school approach to sticking around. Jim Boscov, the company’s CEO, has personally promised to keep stores open.
Eight of Boscov’s 51 stores are in New Jersey, and company leaders say those locations remain a priority.
Boscov’s has been through tough times before. The company survived bankruptcy in 2008 after the family stepped back in to buy the business. Today, the company says some of its strongest locations are in struggling malls.
One of Boscov’s top locations, company officials told the industry news site Bisnow, is at Harbor Square in Egg Harbor Township outside Atlantic City. The shopping center was previously known as Shore Mall before Sears, Steinbach other anchor stores left long ago.
“We continue to do well even when a mall fails,” the Boscov’s CEO told the news site.
So how do they do it?
Jim Boscov has long said the staying power behind his family’s department stores comes from the people on the sales floor and the relationships they build with shoppers.
“If it serves the community, it’s a good investment,” he said of the stores in a 2018 interview. “If it serves someone’s ego, it’s not.”
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