Plans to raze Monroeville Mall surprise industry leaders

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Plans to raze Monroeville Mall surprise industry leaders

Tom Davidson | Sunday, October 12, 2025 5:00 a.m.

Massoud Hossaini | TribLive

Monroeville Mall, shown on Tuesday, Oct. 7.

Monroeville Mall has inspired a book and is featured in movies, including George Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead.”

That prominence may not spare it from demolition. A state funding request made public last week indicates its owner, Walmart, plans to tear down and rebuild on the property it bought in January for about $34 million.

If it happens, Monroeville would join Hempfield as a place where Walmart replaced a mall.

Change is afoot in retail. Many of the malls with fountains, kitschy decorations and fancy restaurants have been replaced by multiuse developments that contain more than shopping centers and a food court.

“From essential services like medical centers and child care to innovative food-and-beverage concepts to entertainment offerings like arcades and indoor amusement parks, many malls across the country are transforming into diversified centers that seamlessly address the needs of surrounding communities.” That’s how Stephanie Cegielski, ICSC vice president of research and public relations, put it in a statement to TribLive.

ICSC is the trade group formerly known as the International Council of Shopping Centers that serves what it calls the marketplace industry.

“We are seeing current malls evolve. While malls in the ’80s and ’90s may have been primarily made up of apparel retailers, today’s successful malls have adapted to incorporate more variety,” Cegielski said.

Of malls and Walmart

Two decades ago, Greengate Mall became Greengate Centre on Route 30 in Hempfield. The county’s first enclosed mall, Greengate ultimately couldn’t compete with Westmoreland Mall, located about three miles east along Route 30.

Retail has been forced to evolve in the region because of a declining population and competition, said John Skiavo, retired executive director of Economic Growth Connection of Westmoreland County.

“You have to ask the question, ‘What can (Western Pennsylvania) support?’ ” he said.

In addition to the malls in Hempfield and Monroeville, the region has these retail centers: Pittsburgh Mills in Frazer and Beaver Valley Mall in Center, both owned by Namdar; outdoor plazas The Waterworks and SouthSide Works in Pittsburgh and The Waterfront in Homestead; The Mall at Robinson; South Hills Village in Upper St. Clair and Ross Park Mall, both owned by Simon Property Group, a successor to the DeBartolo Corp. that once owned the former Century III Mall in West Mifflin.

That is far from a comprehensive list of commercial development in the region.

Pittsburgh Mills has been quietly marketed for sale even as its owner fights criminal charges and lawsuits because of the cratered state of its access roads and parking lot.

Namdar officials didn’t respond to messages and emails seeking comment.

• Empty promises: How Namdar Realty profits from Pittsburgh Mills and other ‘dying’ malls • State senator: Don't let Monroeville Mall become Century III • Walmart plans to demolish Monroeville Mall, according to state grant bid

After Walmart bought the property in Monroeville, developer Cypress Equities said it was considering revitalizing the mall, but it didn’t mention a complete overhaul.

Those details didn’t come until last week, when mention of the plans were alluded to in a pitch by South Saturn Ridge, the limited liability corporation formed by Walmart to manage the property, to state leaders seeking $7.5 million to help cover the cost of demolishing the mall and its outbuildings.

It isn’t unusual for development to seek government aid for ventures such as this, an industry insider told TribLive.

“They’re looking to get maximum government benefit,” said Joe Bell, spokesman for the Cafaro Co., a Niles, Ohio-based company that owns malls, shopping centers and mixed-use developments in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Virginia and Washington.

“It’s really odd that Walmart would be interested in acquiring an established shopping mall that wasn’t struggling,” Bell told TribLive. “I was a little surprised by the Monroeville Mall situation.”

South Saturn Ridge is seeking state funding under the Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program, something that is independent of the state budget stalemate, according to program spokesman Ryan Nornhold.

Walmart spokesman Mark Rickel said the company is “very interested in being part of this redevelopment of the mall” but declined to share any specifics.

The state is seeking input about the projects through Oct. 30. Gov. Josh Shapiro isn’t under a timeline to announce awards, Nornhold said.

The program is designed to help fund projects that have a regional impact, create jobs and increase tax revenues.

The last round of funding saw about 400 awards from about 900 applications. There were about 800 applications in this round, Nornhold said.

Mercer County investment

About 80 miles north of Monroeville, in Mercer County, a developer is promising a $100 million investment that will transform a mall that saw its last anchor store, JCPenney, close last year.

Shenango Valley Mall was demolished in January using $3.5 million from state coffers.

The City of Hermitage sought the funding along with another $730,000 to build an access road, in partnership with Flicore, a Cleveland-area developer.

The new development, billed as Hickory Fields, will include a Target, Chick-fil-A, Chili’s and Longhorn Steakhouse, Hermitage Business and Development Director Mark Longietti told TribLive.

Longietti is a former state representative who once lobbied the governor to support the Hickory Fields development.

“Here we have a distressed mall in the most heavily traveled corridor between Erie and Pittsburgh. We’re not Pittsburgh. We’re not Cleveland. We need to bring something to the table,” Longietti said. “This could be a transformational project for the region.”

The new development will replace a mall that opened in 1968 and was developed by Crown American. In its heyday in the 1970s and ’80s, the mall was also home to Sears, Kaufmann’s, a variety of smaller stores and an arcade.

It proved to be a less-crowded alternative to Eastwood Mall, a 30-minute drive across the Ohio border in Niles that’s the home base of the Cafaro Co.

The region is part of the greater Youngstown, Ohio, area that was a nexus of shopping mall development as it was pioneered by Cafaro and the DeBartolo Group, once led by former Pittsburgh Penguins and San Francisco 49ers owner Edward J. DeBartolo Jr.

DeBartolo was the developer behind Century III Mall in West Mifflin, which is being razed. In 1996, DeBartolo merged with Simon.

Demolition of Century III is expected to be completed next year.

Details

‘Shopping Mall' author laments demise
Losing Monroeville Mall hits home for Matthew Newton.
"Shopping Mall" was published in 2017 about malls in general and Newton's affinity for Monroeville Mall in particular. It also includes a chapter that serves as a paean to Greengate Mall.
Seeing the story in the pages of The New York Times makes it real, Newton, 48, of Wilkins told TribLive.
But the news the mall will likely come down wasn't surprising to him.
"The moment Walmart bought the mall, I envisioned they would demolish it," Newton said. "I don't think Walmart would purchase a $34 million mall and leave it intact."
In many ways, the mall that creates memories worth preserving in a book have long been gone from Monroeville, he said.
It once boasted a skating rink, a large clock tower that included puppets that represented ethnic groups of Pittsburghers, fountains and other things that have fallen by the wayside, Newton said.
"It's like the bones of the place are there, but the character has been washed away."
But to his younger self, the mall was a magical place where the American dream was reality.
"The mall is a place of aspirational thinking. Looking at what you feel like you want," is how Newton put it. "Everyone aspiring to this ideal of what American life should be."
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