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Online shopping just one challenge faced by malls these days

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Top spot in AFC East on line with Patriots vs., uh, Jets?

<p>PLAINS TWP. &#8212; It used to be that Bobby Marhon just had to go around the corner to buy what he wanted for Halloween.</p><p>Nowadays, Marhon needs to travel 50 miles from his home in Frackville, Schuylkill County, to buy &#8220;horror shirts&#8221; for his favorite holiday. He does his shopping at the FYE store in the Wyoming Valley Mall because the Schuylkill Mall, which housed an FYE, shut down last month.</p><p>&#8220;Since it closed, it&#8217;s either come here or go to Reading,&#8221; Marhon said of shopping options for former Schuylkill County Mall patrons.</p><p>From 1970 to 2015, the number of malls grew twice as fast as the U.S. population, according to a Cowen and Company analysis cited in a recent article in the Atlantic. But experts predict 300 to 400 malls will close or be radically re-purposed within a decade.</p><p>On Friday, the occupancy rate for the Wyoming Valley Mall was 91 percent, according to Marketing Director Amanda Hoprich. While she would not specify the number of tenants, a Times Leader walk through the mall counted about 70.</p><p>Hoprich said new retailers would be coming for the holiday season, but she declined to be specific.</p><p>The nationwide occupancy rate at malls in the third quarter of 2017 was 91.7 percent, according to REIS, which tracks commercial real estate.</p><p>Hoprich noted that occupancy rates change weekly.</p><p>So just how has the Wyoming Valley Mall, which opened in 1971, remained viable?</p><p>It helps that the mall is located in an area with a higher population density than the Schuylkill Mall, which sat at the favorable intersection of Interstate 81 and state Route 61 but had only one immediate municipal neighbor, Frackville, population 3,672.</p><p>The Wyoming Valley Mall sits in Plains Township, population 9,961, next to the city of Wilkes-Barre, population 40,569.</p><p>On its website, the mall boasts of other lures: 1,800 hotel rooms within five miles, 24,000 high school and colleges students within 10 miles, and several &#8220;outboxes&#8221; &#8212; or free-standing vendors &#8212; surrounding the mall.</p><p>All of these pluses make it &#8220;a relatively good single shopping destination,&#8221; according to Larry Newman, executive director of the Diamond City Partnership, Wilkes-Barre&#8217;s downtown management organization.</p><p>The mall also has shifted to a broader retail mix, working &#8220;to keep up with fashion trends&#8221; in apparel, Hoprich said. That&#8217;s one reason the mall was glad to have the Swedish H&amp;M chain open in late September.</p><p>&#8220;The grand opening was crazy,&#8221; Hoprich said, smiling.</p><p>Mall management also has used social media wisely, helping to connect with younger shoppers via Facebook and Instagram to &#8220;highlight our retailers, and to stay relevant,&#8221; she said.</p><p>The Wyoming Valley Mall&#8217;s owner, Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust, or PREIT, also is aggressive in replacing or re-purposing anchor stores that pull out, Hoprich said. This can help avoid an alternative solution to mall demise: shifting to mixed-purpose use beyond retail.</p><p>The Steamtown Mall in Scranton &#8212; now the Marketplace at Steamtown &#8212; is becoming a textbook example. When the Bon-Ton department store left, part of the space became a branch of Luzerne County Community College, and another part was taken over for medical services provider Delta Medix.</p><p>Newman echoed a prediction widely held in research and reports on shopping malls: Big malls with broad offerings will not only survive but grow. He pointed to the recently expanded King of Prussia Mall west of Philadelphia, sometimes referred to as a &#8220;fortress mall&#8221; because of the massive footprint that houses more than 2.9 million square feet of indoor shopping.</p><p>It is, Newman said, the place retailers want to set up brick-and-mortar stores in the Philadelphia area.</p><p>In the Wyoming Valley Mall on a recent fall day, Helen Peechatka set a large bun in front of her husband, Bill, who sat alone at the counter at Cinnabon. She beamed and insisted the snack is fine because &#8220;they took all of the calories out of them!&#8221;</p><p>The couple were doing what many people come to malls to do these days: Eat. Hoprich said PREIT has largely abandoned the old &#8220;food court&#8221; idea of a common seating area ringed by fast-food outlets, and now integrates eateries among the other stores.</p><p>The company also has increased the space dedicated to dining &#8212; something most malls are doing in a survival move &#8212; to the point that dining now eats up almost 20 percent of leasable space, more than double what it was years ago. </p><p>The move accommodates two related trends: People look more for experiences than for hard merchandise, and the digital generation increasingly wants to go somewhere that offers a photo-op worthy of posting online. Dining fills both demands.</p><p>It also is, thus far, internet-proof.</p><p>&#8220;You can&#8217;t eat online,&#8221; Newman quipped.</p><p>It&#8217;s the same reason a nascent rebirth of Wilkes-Barre&#8217;s downtown is being led by a growth in eateries.</p><p>&#8220;That&#8217;s an inherently social experience, and it&#8217;s a sector that continues to see growth even as retail struggles with these different competitive channels,&#8221; Newman said.</p><p>Not that such issues mattered to Helen and Bill. While they liked the mall and loved the pastry, they said they travel from Laceyville, Wyoming County, once or twice a month to meet with their daughter, who journeys from near Stroudsburg.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s convenient,&#8221; Helen said. And as a bonus, the big cream-schmeared buns are &#8220;very good.&#8221;</p><p>The Cinnabon is a recent addition, and a prized one, Hoprich said, but the quest for trendy outlets is non-stop.</p><p>And the evolution of mall survival goes on.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Bobby Marhon travels to the Wyoming Valley Mall from Frackville to shop because the mall that was closest to his home shut down last month. (Aimee Dilger | Times Leader )</div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/web1_TTL100517Mall3-2.jpg</photo0><caption0>Bobby Marhon travels to the Wyoming Valley Mall from Frackville to shop because the mall that was closest to his home shut down last month. (Aimee Dilger | Times Leader )</caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/web1_TTL100517Mall2-2.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Clara Keese, Renee Sherell and 7-month-old Tobias stroll the Wyoming Valley Mall on a recent shopping trip. As of Friday, the mall’s occupancy rate was 91 percent. (Aimee Dilger | Times Leader)</div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/web1_TTL100517Mall2-2.jpg</photo1><caption1>Clara Keese, Renee Sherell and 7-month-old Tobias stroll the Wyoming Valley Mall on a recent shopping trip. As of Friday, the mall’s occupancy rate was 91 percent. (Aimee Dilger | Times Leader)</caption1><photoCredit1></photoCredit1></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/web1_TTL100517Mall1-2.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Ruby Saez makes a sugar topping for cinnamon rolls at Cinnabon in the Wyoming Valley Mall earlier this month while Bill Peechatka enjoys a snack. Cinnabon is a recent addition to the mall. (Aimee Dilger | Times Leader) </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo2>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/web1_TTL100517Mall1-2.jpg</photo2><caption2>Ruby Saez makes a sugar topping for cinnamon rolls at Cinnabon in the Wyoming Valley Mall earlier this month while Bill Peechatka enjoys a snack. Cinnabon is a recent addition to the mall. (Aimee Dilger | Times Leader) </caption2><photoCredit2></photoCredit2></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><subheadMeta></subheadMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Mark Guydish</p><p>mguydish@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><factboxMeta></factboxMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Mark Guydish at 570-991-6112 or on Twitter @TLMarkGuydish</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Bucking the trend: Wyoming Valley Mall remains viable as others shut down