The mall was opened in 1963 by the R.H. Macy Company, which opened the 3-level, 318,800-square-foot (29,620 m2) Macy's as the original anchor.[2] The open-air, 70-store first phase of the mall was completed by 1967, and originally included stores such as Record Town, Woolworth's, Lerner Shops, Bond's,[3] and JCPenney, which was the first in-line JCPenney location in the New York area at the time.[4] The mall's Loews Theaters location opened around the same time. In the mid 1970s, there was also a section of the mall divided into an area named "Captree Corners", a bazaar-like setup of small stores clustered into a village-like mini-mall area.[5]
The mall was fully enclosed in 1975. In December 1986, the mall's ownership was sold to the Westfield Corporation for $85 million.[6] Shortly after the change in ownership, plans for an expansion were underway. The renovation/expansion was underway by 1996, which gutted the northern end of the center, which was replaced with 40,000 square feet (3,700 m2) of new retail area, along with a newly built, three-level (216,300 ft2) Sears, which opened in September 1997. A two-level (120,000 ft2) Lord & Taylor eventually opened in late 1998, replacing the former Woolworth.[7] On March 4, 2012, Macy's shuttered to make way for an entirely new store format for Macy's. It opened on August 14, 2013. In May 2015, it was announced that Sears would shutter as part of an ongoing decision to phase out of its traditional brick-and-mortar format.[8] On June 16, 2016, Dick's Sporting Goods announced that it would remodel the Sears anchor store.[9][10][11][12]
On August 27, 2020, it was announced that all Lord & Taylor department stores would permanently close, due to the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.[13]
