As Brixmor Property Group executives began transforming the Roosevelt Mall, they briefly debated whether to change the name.
After all, the 60-year-old Northeast Philly shopping center is undergoing a more than $70 million makeover that promises to bring it into the modern age with new tenants, upgraded facades, and a better layout.
As Brixmor executives walked around the 620,000-square-foot complex on a recent day, they said they already see the outdoor mall becoming a community hub — with a gym, an organic grocer, and new fast-casual dining options.
Despite these changes, they have decided the Roosevelt Mall should not be rebranded.
“It’s an iconic name,” said David Vender, Brixmor Property Group’s executive vice president for the north region, who is based in Conshohocken. “People know it as a landmark.”
Brixmor operates about 350 shopping centers nationwide, but some of its top executives — including new CEO Brian Finnegan, who grew up in Roxborough — have soft spots for Philly, forged by personal or family connections to the region.
During a visit to the Roosevelt Mall last week, they said they were proud of their local properties.
Those include the Village at Newtown in Bucks County and Pilgrim Gardens in Drexel Hill, where the company recently built an artful “Delco” sign to tap into local pride.
And they said their connection to the community around the Roosevelt Mall has only grown stronger since last year’s plane crash, which killed eight people, injured two dozen, damaged nearby homes, and left an 8-foot-deep crater in front of the mall.
Even before the tragedy, they said, they considered how their local redevelopments affected the Philly-area residents who shop, eat, and drive by their centers every day.
At the Roosevelt Mall — which sits on 36 acres between Cottman Avenue, Roosevelt Boulevard, and Bustleton Avenue — these decisions have begun to pay off.
In the last year, the center logged 6.3 million visits, a 5% year-over-year increase and a 19% jump when compared with the 12 months before Sprouts Farmers Market’s 2024 opening, according to company executives.
Occupancy was over 98% this spring, they said, and customers spend about 35 minutes there on average, on par with the national average for all Brixmor complexes.
When you’re able to bring together “higher-quality food and beverage, fitness, service … then you’re also able to attract more elevated retail” stores, said Finnegan, noting that Ulta Beauty and Victoria’s Secret are among the tenants signed on for the next phase of the Roosevelt Mall’s redevelopment.
Achieving the tenant mix of a modern shopping center
When the Roosevelt Mall opened in 1964, its main promenade was referred to as “Chestnut Street Northeast,” with several outposts of Center City clothing stores, according to an Inquirer article from the time.
The shopping center had apparel shops, such as Baker Shoes and Famous Maid, as well as “the Cavalier, a cafeteria-style restaurant with a game room and a retail bakery,” The Inquirer reported. It was anchored by an S. Klein’s discount department store.
The Roosevelt Mall was built as part of the Roosevelt Boulevard shopping complex, bordered by Cottman and Castor Avenues. The larger development — which also had Gimbels and Lit Bros. department stores — was called the country’s largest “in-town” shopping center at the time.
Decades later, consumers can buy clothes, home goods, even groceries online with just a few clicks. So shopping centers need more than just retail stores, said executives at Brixmor, which became the Roosevelt Mall’s owner more than a decade ago.
They said they have intentionally brought in tenants that customers may visit multiple times a week and added more pedestrian walkways, open-air plazas, and outdoor seating.
“Historically, shopping centers were very utilitarian, and now they’re really becoming more community assets, so we’re really careful about our merchandising mix,” said Ryan Guheen, Brixmor’s senior vice president of development.
The latest redevelopment push began around 2020, when Brixmor opened an LA Fitness outpost on the site of a former Turf Club off-track betting venue, near a new Oak Street Health clinic.
Since then, the company has constructed buildings in underused sections of the parking lot and filled them with popular chain eateries like Raising Cane’s chicken; the American-Chinese food spot Panda Express; and Tous les Jours, a Korean-French bakery and coffee shop.
The Sprouts organic grocer has driven traffic to the center since it opened in 2024, and a nearby Wonder dine-in food hall and delivery kitchen opened last year.
The 37,000-square-foot under-construction building, set to house a Victoria’s Secret and an Ulta, will also include fast-casual staples like Shake Shack and Cava, which serves Mediterranean bowls and pitas.
Tenants like these, Guheen said, provide “multiple opportunities for people to stay on property to shop retail, get their workout in, go to the bakery, get a coffee.”
Some mall retailers have found homes in shopping centers
As Brixmor executives diversify the tenant mix at their shopping centers, they say they do not see retail stores going extinct.
In fact, as some indoor malls deteriorate or become residential-focused town centers, “the open-air strip centers benefit,” Vender said, as traditional mall retailers look to open more stores in outdoor complexes.
Elsewhere in the Northeast, the Franklin Mall, formerly Franklin Mills, has been in decline for years and was recently listed for sale. Real estate investor Dean Adler has said he wants to buy the 137-acre mall and turn it into a youth sports complex with a hotel and Margaritaville-themed water park.
Seven miles away, the Roosevelt Mall is home to several shops that were once found almost exclusively in enclosed malls, such as Bath & Body Works, Foot Locker, and the forthcoming Victoria’s Secret. These companies’ higher-ups have pivoted in recent years, adding more locations in open-air centers.
“It’s not like retailers are leaving malls en masse … at least in the best malls,” Finnegan said. But “as they open stores in open-air shopping centers with grocery stores, with fitness uses, with elevated food and beverage, they’re seeing the sales performance” — and then want to keep investing in shopping centers.
Longer-standing retail tenants are continuing to see success, too. Finnegan said the Roosevelt Mall’s 300,000-square-foot standalone Macy’s is among the company’s top-performing locations in the region, rivaling the King of Prussia Mall store.
The department store is the center’s largest driver of traffic, recording more than 900,000 annual visits, said Brixmor executives, who are not worried about the department store closing as the Center City store did last year.
A Rita’s Water Ice franchise has also stayed put in the Roosevelt Mall for decades, Finnegan said.
Company executives said they are optimistic this momentum will continue. Along with the under-construction section, redevelopment plans also include another standalone building that has yet to break ground — and the cost of which is not included in the current price tag.
Finnegan put it simply: “Opportunity begets opportunity.”
