Store Directory

I was born in 1973.

Concrete slab.

Forty-eight stores. One Orange Julius.

People drove from three towns over just to walk around inside me and eat something fried on a stick.

Before me, this was called the Pine Woods. Just trees and deer and sky.

People used to hunt here. Teens would throw parties or park and neck. Kids built forts out of fallen branches and old mattress springs. This was the kind of untouched land where memories were made and legends were whispered on late summer nights.

Then came the vote: shopping center or subdivision. Back then, people wanted a place to buy records, try on polyester pants, and eat something covered in neon cheese. So they chose me.

They called me The Commons. Then Commons at the Pines. Then, the Pines Center Mall. Now, officially, I’m Parcel #618, Redevelopment Zone C.

Tomorrow, they’re bringing the machines. Bulldozers. Graders.

So tonight, I’m telling my story. Because nobody ever asked.

Woolworth’s

Opening weekend, they cut a ribbon the size of a garden hose and had a marching band from the high school play on the roof of Woolworths.

A mayor said something about community. A priest blessed the parking lot. A kid threw up in the planter outside B. Dalton before 10 a.m.

It was perfect.

I had escalators. People rode them like they were amusement park rides. Little kids went up and down ten times before their parents noticed. Six days after I opened, someone proposed in front of the fountain.

The theater had two screens and one working projector most of the time. Carpeting that smelled like bubble gum and damp popcorn. I ran Jaws for sixteen straight weeks, and someone still screamed every time the head popped out of the boat. Saturday Night Fever had teens buying white suits at Chess King like they had somewhere to wear them. Rocky played the week of that blizzard, and people still came, wrapped in trash bags, quoting it in the lobby. And when Star Wars hit, the line wrapped all the way down to Radio Shack. One kid saw it 19 times. He left his retainer in the cup holder during one of them. It’s still there, probably.

Before the food court turned corporate, the Lattanzi brothers opened a pizza joint near the JC Penney entrance. Real crust. No gimmicks. They hung a black-and-white photo of their parents in the window, letting kids split slices on paper plates. They gave out free garlic knots if your dad was in uniform or your mom looked like she’d had a rough day.

You want to talk about foot traffic? Talk about the night Fleetwood Mac tickets went on sale. Or Springsteen. The line started outside Record Town at 3 a.m. Some brought lawn chairs. Some brought flasks. Some brought rumors about surprise shows and secret encores. Nobody cared if it was true. They just wanted to be close to the music or the idea of it.

The mall hummed in those years. People didn’t just shop. They lingered. They met. They made plans, exchanged kisses, broke up, made up, and got married.

Even ACME felt like a community. The manager knew your name. The produce guy, Raymond, not Ray, gave your kid a Granny Smith when he had a bad day. So when they left in 1981 for some strip center with better docks and more parking, I felt it.

But back then, I was still sure I’d last forever. I had Sears. I had a movie theater. I had the Lattanzis tossing dough like it was performance art. I was more than square footage. I was where everything happened, on purpose or by accident.

And honestly? I thought I’d keep going like that. Forever.

Chess King

By the mid-80s, I was untouchable. Full parking lot before noon. Double-wide strollers. Feathered hair. Members Only jackets with too many cuffs.

Every weekend felt like a festival. Tiffany performed outside Macy’s in ’87, and half the town showed up. A girl fainted near the Sunglass Hut. A boy cried when he touched her hand. Security had to cut through the crowd with folding chairs to get to the power switch.

You could always count on three things: Someone was getting their ears pierced at Claire’s. Someone was lost near the fountain. Gladys at Macy’s was spraying perfume like she was on a mission from God.

Gladys didn’t sample; Gladys launched. She once hit a man in the back of the neck from twenty feet away. He bought cologne out of fear and respect.

Mall walkers came early, and teens came late. Payphones rang, but no one picked up. A fake cop car was parked outside to “keep things orderly,” but we all knew it was just for show.

The JC Penney photo studio was booked months out. Families showed up in matching sweaters and high hopes. Laser beams, faux sunsets, weird cloudy backdrops that still defy explanation. Those portraits live on fireplace mantels to this day. Most of the hair has not aged well.

Girls sauntered past the arcade, pretending not to look, their plastic bracelets and charms making their music. Boys dumped quarters into Spyhunter and prayed someone was watching. A girl once got proposed to in the food court using onion rings. She said no, but still ate them.

And through it all, I thrived. I held all of it, the glitter and the grease. You didn’t come here to shop. You came here to be seen, meet someone, get dumped, or buy something for a school dance. To feel like you were part of something electric and ordinary at the same time.

I was the center of everything, and I had a map that said, “You are here,” to prove it.

Victoria’s Secret

In 1993, they banned smoking inside me. The ashtrays disappeared overnight. No more curling fingers of smoke from bored dads waiting outside The Limited. No more teenagers flicking ash into fake ficus plants like they were in a noir film.

That same year, they built an Applebee’s on the highway side of the parking lot. Branded patio umbrellas. Microwave menus. Neighborhood hospitality with a laminated smile. It wasn’t bad. But it wasn’t ours.

The Lattanzi brothers sold the pizza place and moved to Vero Beach. Sbarro took their spot. Same footprint, colder sauce. No more garlic knots for tired moms. No more black-and-white photo of Mama and Papa by the register. Just steam trays and red trays and a rotating pizza warmer that squeaked when no one was watching.

Abercrombie

By 1997, the movie theater was gone. The arcade, too. Abercrombie & Fitch took over the space with a vengeance. Loud music. Too much cologne. Jeans with holes in them on purpose. They knocked down the old projector room and installed a dressing room where people used to kiss in the back row of Gremlins 2.

The lighting got dimmer, the music got louder, and the walls got beige. We still had crowds, but something had shifted.

They stopped lingering and started passing through. No one sat by the fountain anymore, and no one wrote their number on the back of a receipt and slid it across the table at Orange Julius.

The payphones stopped ringing. Or maybe they rang, but no one cared.

It wasn’t declining. Not yet. It was something more dangerous. It was forgetting.

Build-A-Bear

By 2008, you wouldn’t have known the difference. Except everything was different.

The walls were beige, and the light was flat. Most storefronts were the same, but why go to Gap when you could go to gap.com and have it delivered with free shipping?

The kiosks multiplied like weeds. Lotions. Potions. Cell phone cases. Neck massagers that buzzed if you walked too close. No one made eye contact. No one made plans here anymore.

Gone were the days of cruising the mall. There was no circuit to walk, no crowd to see or be seen by. Just teenagers who came in for warmth and Wi-Fi. And boomers looking for a LensCrafters coupon.

They tried to fix it. A Best Buy moved in for a while, but it felt like a big box in a building meant for a community. They installed a children’s ball pit next to Sunglass Hut. In the first week, someone peed in it twice.

We missed out on an Apple Store. The Shoppes at Whistling Bluffs got that, a Mega Barnes and Noble, and a Cheesecake Factory.

At Christmas, they added valet parking outside Macy’s. Valet. At a mall. You handed your keys to a nineteen-year-old in a windbreaker who parked your car seven feet away.

Santa had a real beard and claimed to have gone to NYU’s drama program. He refused to say “ho ho ho.” Instead, he whispered. It didn’t land.

People came, but they didn’t stay. I still smelled of sugar, sweat, and seasonal stress, but something was off.

I felt used, like the backdrop for errands no one wanted to run, like a memory people didn’t want to admit they still missed.

I was still standing. Still open. Still here. But I had become the kind of place people described with a shrug.

"You know, it’s not what it used to be." They were right. And I knew it.

Spirit Halloween

By the 2010s, I had more square footage than purpose. Half my signs were outdated, and the other half pointed to stores that no longer existed.

A Black church started holding services in the old Sears. They brought folding chairs, a keyboard, and more joy than I'd seen in years. They filled the space with music and warmth, and they didn’t care that it smelled like tire cleaner and cologne samples.

A DICK’S Sporting Goods opened, and someone installed a rock wall. For a few weeks, kids lined up to climb. Then they stopped. I watched that wall collect dust, carabiners swinging slightly in the air conditioning.

Halloween stores came and went, always in the same spot. They “pop up,” but they never really leave. They wait for fall, like seasonal mold with better branding, pumpkin spice for the haunted.

Walk-in clinics moved in, as did a tax prep kiosk and a karate studio that looked like it was designed by a tired uncle.

The food court went quiet. No one cleaned the trays anymore. I still had a Sbarro, but even the fake cheese didn’t shine like it used to.

The Applebee’s was busy, though. They had trivia nights. You could win a free appetizer if you knew what Newman’s job was on Seinfeld or how many times Paul Giamatti was nominated for an Emmy.

People still came. But it wasn’t the same people. And the ones who remembered me didn’t want to see what I’d become.

I started to feel like an old photograph someone had left in a drawer—not quite trash, not quite treasure, just forgotten.

Until they remembered me again. Not to save me. But to replace me.

Parcel #618, Redevelopment Zone C

Tomorrow they will bring the machines. Bulldozers. Graders. Contractors in high-vis vests who won’t even glance up as they tear into me.

They say it’s a revitalization. Twenty-eight pickleball courts. A saltwater pool. “Community wellness anchored by active living.”

I once had the highest revenue Gap in all of South Jersey. Now, boomers will tear their ACLs on top of where their kids lined up for Backstreet Boys CDs.

I always knew I wouldn’t last forever. But I thought maybe… condos. A minor league baseball team with a weird name. A hospital. Perhaps a medical center.

Instead, I’m dying so someone can name a pickleball league after their accountant.

It’s not the ending that hurts. It’s the idea that this, this version of “revival” is what comes next.

Feels like a marathon runner being told it’s not the mileage that’ll get him. It’s the cholesterol.

I wasn’t just square footage. I was a place. A destination. Built to hold people in all their messy, noisy, searching glory.

I watched first kisses, saw parents age, and carried the weight of breakups, dance recitals, college send-offs, and prom night panic buys.

They called it foot traffic. But it was more than that. It was life.

I held their memories. And now I’ll be a memory, too.

Let the boomers stretch where kids once sprinted. Let someone else hum with their stories.

Remember you were here.