My longtime friend; Gary has been telling me about his childhood mall that isn’t on deadmalls.com yet, Frederick Towne Mall in Frederick Maryland. Here is his email:
I really can’t give you any specific history on the mall.
Here is what I remember:
Original anchors from when I was a kid:
JC Penney
Eyerly’s
Woolworth’s
Montgomery WardsThe MW wasn’t actually on mall property, from what I remember. I don’t think that mall security could patrol that area. but anyway, lol.
The JCP became a JCP homestore, and then a Boscov’s.
The MW closed and was eventually torn down and a Home Depot was built on the same spot. But you can’t get to the HD from the mall.
The Eyerly’s became Bon-Ton, after Bon-Ton bought them out.MW had an auto center which was eventually redeveloped and became Mr. Tire, Carrabba’s, a Mexican grocery store, and an eyewear store.
There is a small strip mall behind the mall that was originally home to a Martin’s, a dry cleaners, and a few other stores. Now it’s Ollie’s and a church.
There was a three screen theater, which was expanded to ten screens. About this time, they also juggled some of the stores around and moved the barber shop to the other end with some other service-type stores.
This mall never had a food court. There was a Ground Round restaurant (which I can’t remember what it was before it became GR), and some other smaller fast food places scattered throughout the mall. The Woolworth’s also had an eatery.
Near the CVS there used to be a freestanding bank drive through structure, and the tubes went into the bank in the mall. Eventually it was torn down.
Here are the pics:
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v608/garya/ftm/
///edit, October 1st 2008///
February 13, 1982 newspaper … this link might work and it might not work.
Where to Start? I’ve gone to this mall for as long as I can remember…I live out of state now and I still come down to the Fredericktowne Mall to go to Boscov’s. Woolworth’s was never a tenant at the mall, although it did feature a Mccrory’s 5&10 near the center of the mall (now Bon-Ton’s Home Store). Their lunch counter space is still somewhat visible, If your standing in front of the store, there’s a wierd jet out room to the left that looks like it shouldn’t be there. Well, that’s where the lunch counter was…the curvy part at the top was the overhang for it. I guess you could say 1/2 of it was inside the mall, and 1/2 of it was inside Mccrory’s. I remember the food being pretty good, if my memory’s right, I think the chairs/stools were a really dark wood,and I remember baskets of Climbing houseplants lining the ceiling forming a canopy. As for what they use that space for now…I think it’s where they store all of the malls christmas decorations…I peeked in there, and nothing remains of the lunch counter…When it was Mccrory’s, you could park in the back of the mall and enter thru the doors back there (bon-ton now says they’re a “fire exit”, kind of bizarre if you ask me). If you’re back there look on either side of the blacked out doors, you will see a bunch of newer brick and the faint lines of where an overhang was…these were where Mccrory’s display windows were. As Far as the outparcels go, Penneys (on the Left) and Wards (on the Right) both had auto centers at the mall, it’s strange to think of J.C. Penney having an auto center, but they were once a full line department store, on the same tier with Wards and Sears. As my memory serves me, the Penneys auto center closed many years before the actual store did (restructuring), and I remember it being a Donald Rice Tire Center…the building still looked the same, with the brick matching the main mall. Now it’s a Chevron and a quick change oil place. One of the things that has really hurt this mall, was the closing of Montgomery Wards. As I remember, they had just spent about 2 million renovating the store shortly before the chain folded. Wards was the only tenant to my knowledge to own their space at the mall, so when they went bankrupt, they auctioned all of the real estate, and god only knows why, Home Depot bought it and put a store there. Nobody could do anything though, other than stare at it and question it’s existence, because they owned the building outright, separate from the mall. Also, as for the lack of stores, someone who worked in one of the stores that closed told me that the reason for the mass exodus of retailers from the mall is not due to lack of foot traffic, but that the mall was sold during the real estate boom, and was supposed to be razed and redeveloped. Thus, whenever anyones lease came up for renewal, they’d deny their request to renew. That’s what happened to The Ground Round (I miss Ground Round
, Bath and Body Works, Waldens, and all of the rest. Their plan seems to have backfired with the downturn in the economy, At the least at this point, they should revamp/remodel the whole thing, and beg the chains (and Customers!) to come back. It was once a nice mall, and hopefully someday it will be again. Knowing what I know, if I had to guess, razing the entire mall at this point is probably no longer an option…If you’d like to pick my brain about anything else, let me know…-Dan
Comment by Dan — October 18, 2008 @ 8:23 am |
Thanks for the correction re: McCrory’s. I misremembered it being a Woolworth’s. But the Woolworth’s was over on 7th St.
The Ground Round was a Ponderosa.
Comment by Gary — October 18, 2008 @ 7:08 pm |
So is the McCrory’s space vacant still?
Comment by Bobby — October 30, 2008 @ 1:14 pm |
Yep…..but I thought it was a Woolco? 7th Street, at the Frederick Shopping Center….the first shopping area built outside downtown…..here’s a link to whats there now: http://www.frederickshoppingcenter.com/….for a long time after they pulled out, it was an ames….then a few years after that, maybe 2-3 years ago…..they remodeled it and its really different now. Frederick Towne Mall looks worse every time I head down there. Auntie Anne’s pretzels is gone now, as well as the Kid’s shoe store (Chanticleer’s?), which moved to a strip mall further down on the golden mile. I miss my mid shopping pretzel break
Whenever I go in, i always ask the cashiers in the dept stores what they know about the current status of the mall, and they usually grumble a bit and share my sentiment of how it used to be…and how it should be that way now! 
When I was down there last week, someone told me that the mall’s pending forclosure (not sure if it’s true or not…but seems likely to me…after all, no stores, no rent coming in, and presumably no way to pay the mortgage!) Maybe someone will buy it and fix it up again….after all, it is a pretty good location….and they’re still the only mall on that side until you hit Hagerstown…Maybe if they rebuild it, the people will come? LOL! I’ll post again if I learn anything else
P.S….I think Mccrory’s, which if I remember right, closed in Spring 1996, was vacant until about 2003-2004…when Bon-Ton put their home/furniture store in there….See my above post for more info.
Comment by Dan — January 17, 2009 @ 8:58 pm |
If they would rebuild it, I would be the first one to show up and shop there, I would much rather shop at that mall than FSK, I hate the traffic and roads on the other side of town. It was a McCrory’s at the FTM. 7th Street had both a Woolworth’s and a Woolco at one time. The main problem with Frederick towne mall is the mall’s owners, I wish and I hope that someone responsible will come and buy that mall and bring it back.
Comment by Uh-uh — February 5, 2009 @ 11:43 am |
I am with you. I wish that they would bring back this mall. BonTon was a great store a few years ago. When we first moved to Frederick in 1995, I remember shopping @ BonTon and thinking what a great store it was – very upscale and very much like a Lord and Taylor. Now it has become somewhat crummy – dropped much of the upscale merchandise it used to carry. I have been trying to locate older pictures of this mall, and cannot seem to locate any on the internet. Does anyone have any pictures they can share of how the mall used to be?
Comment by RAB — October 5, 2009 @ 7:21 pm |
It’s a good location….the only mall until you get to Hagerstown (Valley Mall)….I tend to avoid FSK as well…Once Value City folded, I decided I didn’t want to deal with the roads to go in there (what a maze!) If I need something from Sears or Penneys, I usually hit Valley Mall, after going to the Prime Outlets. Its really sad how decrepit the owners have let it (Fredericktowne Mall) get. All we can do is hope that someone buys it (i was told it’s for sale) or that it goes into foreclosure…which I can sadly see happening with the lack of tenants, assuming that theres not much cash coming in since they evicted everyone when their leases came up for renewal. I’d hate to have them tear it down and put an outdoor town center there, which is what I think they planned on doing….Its too cold in the winter for that in my opinion…Ditto for shopping at Prime Outlets in the winter too! They (Prime Outlets) would have been better off enclosing their center like a shopping mall..that way they’d get more foot traffic in the winter. I don’t know if anyone remembers the Blue Ridge Outlet Center in Martinsburg, WV…that place was really cool….all of the stores were indoors in renovated former textile factory buildings. When they built Prime Outlets, everything packed up and moved there, I would assume because of it’s proximity to I-70…..Here’a a link detailing the demise of it http://www.nantucketindependent.com/news/2005/0824/Front_Page/003.html I’d forgotten until I looked at that a minute ago the specifics of the demise….quite sad. Anyways, I haven’t been up that way in a few weeks, but I’m going to head there in the next few days, so If I know anything else, I’ll post it here. I hope that someone finds all of this useful.
Comment by Dan — February 5, 2009 @ 3:25 pm |
I was up there today – very depressing. The mall is even emptier now than when the pictures were taken. The wing between The Bon Ton and Home Depot is totally empty save for a pizza parlor, and the other side has maybe three or four stores, total. The anchors, however, look like they’re doing just fine. The floor is quite uneven as well, which I found somewhat annoying. The anchors (the two Bon Tons and Boscov’s) appear to have been updated fairly recently, and the mall itself looks fairly new inside for the most part – did it get a renovation within the last ten years?
The thing that I found most odd, though, is the printed signage throughout the place. “Take only what you need” on the paper towel dispenser in the restroom, and various other I-can’t-believe-they’re-posting-this signage. Basically, they’re advertising that the mall is overrun with undesirables, at least as far asa they’re concerned.
So all in all, I wonder if Frederick Towne Mall can be revived at all. I wonder if it’s too far gone to make a comeback. The area around it seems healthy business-wise, but I believe the mall is beyond help.
Comment by Ben Schumin — July 6, 2009 @ 12:40 am |
I believe it could be revived, if someone with some braincells could see the potential and buy it. (and take down the lovely “warm welcome” signs that make me feel like I shouldn’t even shop there) It was completely remodeled about 1992-93 or so. I was working in one of the stores in 92-93. Scuttlebut around the mall at the time was that the mall had been sold to someone who didn’t even want it in the first place, but took it in order to purchase another property, it was apparently a package deal of the sort of “If you want this one, you have to take the other one too.” I don’t know if the people who own the mall now are the same as bought it back then, or if the mall has been sold again since? If it’s the same people who bought it back then, it should be no surprise if they treat it that way, considering they didn’t want it in the first place, apparently.
Comment by uh-uh — October 19, 2009 @ 3:15 pm |