The Cherry Hill Mall is soon set to welcome five new stores that have committed to more than 25,000 square feet of retail space at the South Jersey mall.
The additions include Aritzia, the viral women’s clothing brand, which is set to open a store at the 1.3 million-square-foot Camden County mall by spring 2027. The complex is also adding legacy brands such as Timberland and True Religion, according to executives with PREIT, which owns the mall.
“Retailers at this level are choosing their next locations very carefully right now, and the fact that six of them chose Cherry Hill Mall in the same leasing period speaks volumes,” Paula Charles, PREIT’s senior vice president of leasing, said in a statement.
“For shoppers, it means more of the brands they want in one place and an experience that keeps getting better every time they visit,” Charles added.
One of dozens of Dick’s House of Sport outposts, it will be represent “the largest single-tenant addition to Cherry Hill Mall in more than a decade,” PREIT executives said.
The new retailers will also join Crocs, which last month opened a 2,000-square-foot store near the future Dick’s House of Sport, and DoneRight Doner Kebab, a fast-casual Mediterranean food spot that mall executives said will open later this summerin the food court.
People walk by a new store, Pop Mart, at Cherry Hill Mall on Black Friday 2025.
But higher-end complexes like Cherry Hill and King of Prussia seem to be thriving. King of Prussia Mall, in Montgomery County, also just announced a slate of new openings.
Here’s what to know about the new shops coming soon to the Cherry Hill Mall:
Timberland: The boots and outdoor-wear company is set to open an 1,800-square-foot store later this summer. It will be near Dick’s House of Sport.
Indochino: The custom-suit-maker is set to open a 1,200-square-foot store before the 2026 holiday season. It will be off the Grand Court, near American Eagle and Pop Mart.
Aritzia: Set to occupy more than 20,000 square feet in the central Grand Court, its space will include not only a clothing store but also an A-OK Cafe, the brand’s in-house coffee shop. It is on track to open in spring 2027.
True Religion: The denim company is set to open a 2,230-square-foot store sometime early next year near Dick’s House of Sport.
Also at the mall, Pandora and Spencer’s recently moved into larger storefronts, and Lululemon is set to relocate into an expanded space in the Grand Court before the 2026 holiday season.
NovaCare Rehabilitation’s parent company, Select Medical Holdings Corp., was taken private in $3.9 billion private equity deal this week.
NovaCare has more than 100 physical therapy locations in the Philadelphia region, including some through a partnership with Rothman Orthopaedics.
For 25 years, NovaCare sponsored the Philadelphia Eagles practice complex in South Philadelphia. Jefferson Health took over the sponsorship this year.
Top management joined private-equity firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe in the acquisition of Select Medical, which is based in Mechanicsburg, Pa. The sale was completed Wednesday. The price per share was $16.50 per share, an 18% premium to the latest close before the deal was announced in November.
In addition to outpatient physical therapy through NovaCare and other subsidiaries at 1,850 locations in 36 states, Select Medical operates 104 long-term acute-care hospitals in 28 states and 38 rehabilitation hospitals in 15 states. The company has more than 45,000 employees and had $5.5 billion in revenue last year.
Select Medical acquired NovaCare in 1999. Publicly traded NovaCare fell on hard times because of Medicare reimbursement changes under the federal Budget Reconciliation Act in 1997. The law capped reimbursement for speech, physical, and occupational therapy in nursing homes.
The company, then headquartered in King of Prussia, lost $700 million in annual revenue because of those changes, The Inquirer reported at the time.
The King of Prussia Mall is set to get several new shops and restaurants in the coming months.
As some other retail centers struggle, die, and transform, the massive Montgomery County complex has remained a thriving shopping destination, with a wide array of retailers, dining options, and experiential concepts.
Candyland Adventure: The indoor playground and kids entertainment center, which already has a Springfield location, plans to open another location near Primark this winter, according to Candyland’s Facebook page.
Los Chicos Mexican Grill: The restaurant is set to open at a yet-to-be-released location.
The Pandora store will also move from the Court to the Plaza, and the David Yurman store will undergo a facelift. David Yurman will open a temporary boutique near Neiman Marcus while its permanent location is renovated.
Adidas: The sportswear company’s new location, near Eataly, includes a customization lab, where customers can personalize jerseys or put custom designs on sneakers.
Nespresso: The boutique sells coffee makers and espresso machines, fancy milk frothers, and more from its new outpost near the Apple store.
Faherty: The casual, coastal-style clothing brand has a new store near Nordstrom.
We knew that a list of 76 iconic Philadelphia foods would leave something out. It did. After hearing from readers — and revisiting a few of our own debates — we had to mention six items that deserve a place in the city’s culinary canon. They don’t replace the original 76; they just expand the conversation.
The ‘combo’: Hot dog and fishcake on a roll
The hot dog-fish cake combo topped with pepper hash at Lenny’s Hot Dogs in Feasterville.
Long before Philadelphia claimed the cheesesteak as its signature sandwich, another pairing drew a following: the hot dog and fishcake combo. Culinary historians generally agree that Abe Levis (rhymes with “crevice”) created it in 1895 by pressing a fried fish cake atop a grilled frank on the same bun at his luncheonette on Sixth Street near Lombard.
Instant surf-and-turf!
Levis also created Champ Cherry, the bright-red, cider-like soda that became the combo’s traditional companion. The Old Original Levis shop changed hands several times, spawned a few short-lived offshoots, and finally closed in 1992 under owner Elliott Hirsh, who later revived Levis as a store in Abington from 2012 to 2017 while marketing Champ Cherry in cans.
But tastes have changed and the brands are moribund, as Hirsh, now 80, acknowledged: “I’ve been actively trying to find someone that wants to take it over. And not even sell it. Just take it over. I’d hate to die and take it with me, but that’s what we’re going to do.”
The hot dog-fishcake combo, at least, survives. Just after World War II, Levis rival Lenny’s Hot Dogs also sold them from a stand nearby at Fifth and Passyunk.
Lenny’s secret sauce was the pepper hash — a sweet-and-sour relish of cabbage and bell peppers that cuts through the richness of the dish— created by owner Lenny Kravitz’s mother, Ida.
Kravitz expanded Lenny’s to several locations from Mount Airy to Margate, N.J. In the 1980s, he sold his final shop, at 6620 Castor Ave. in the Northeast, to Wayne Knapp. Kravitz died in 1998.
Hawk Krall’s illustration of the “surf ’n turf” Philly combo (fishcake and frank) was originally done for SeriousEats.com.
Knapp later relocated Lenny’s to Feasterville. That shop as well as Johnny Hot’s, John Danze Jr.’s truck stop on Delaware Avenue in Fishtown, are among the few standard-bearers of this classic. Be sure to add a squirt of yellow mustard and a smattering of diced onions, as illustrator Hawk Krall suggested in his 2009 poster print of the sandwich.
Chicken salad and oysters
Fried oysters with chicken salad from Oyster House.
As for another curious combo, only in Philadelphia would someone look at cool, creamy chicken salad and crunchy fried oysters and think, “Of course those belong together.”
The unlikely pairing has been a local specialty for well over a century, dating to the city’s grand oyster houses, hotels, and taverns in the late 1800s. One popular explanation of its origin holds that tavern keepers paired cheap, plentiful oysters with more expensive chicken to stretch a serving. Food historian William Woys Weaver has noted that Philadelphia’s finest hotels elevated the dish, serving chicken salad dressed with tarragon mayonnaise and encircled by crisp fried oysters. More humble versions turned up in neighborhood brew houses and lunch counters across the city.
Similar dishes appeared in New York, Baltimore, and Boston, and some historians believe that Philadelphia’s influential Black catering families helped popularize the combination. What is certain is that chicken salad and oysters were served at an organizing meeting of Philadelphia’s Union League in 1862.
The combo’s popularity has ebbed in recent years, and its primary home is now Oyster House near Rittenhouse Square, whose family ownership dates back nearly 80 years.
Crazy Richard’s Peanut Butter
Crazy Richard’s Peanut Butter, founded in 1972, is still available on grocery shelves.
Life was all Skippy and Jif in the early 1970s when a Philadelphia music teacher decided to grind peanuts in his kitchen because he couldn’t find peanut butter that tasted the way he remembered.
Richard Marcus was a conductor, pianist, radio host, and founder of the Society Hill School of Music & Art. Frustrated by the sweetened, homogenized spreads that dominated grocery shelves, he bought five pounds of peanuts at Reading Terminal Market, roasted them, and blitzed them in his blender. The result was nothing more than peanuts — no sugar, salt, or oils.
Friends loved it. By 1972, they convinced him to package it. Marcus produced an initial run of about 144 jars, selling them through Philadelphia delis and health-food stores. He called it Crazy Richard’s, his wink to skeptics who thought he was nuts for marketing a peanut butter that separated naturally and required stirring.
Word of mouth did the rest. Marcus eventually gave up his music school to run the business full time, first contracting production in Conshohocken before opening plants in Pennsauken and later Bellmawr. At its peak under his ownership, Crazy Richard’s sold about 750,000 jars a year throughout the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast and by mail. Marcus insisted that there was no secret recipe: “It’s just ground peanuts.”
In 1991, Ohio’s Krema Nut Co. bought Crazy Richard’s and kept Marcus’ one-ingredient recipe intact. Today, 12 years after his death, the brand is sold nationwide. The “Crazy Richard” on the label is still the Philadelphia musician who proved that sometimes the simplest ideas stick.
Fishtown Iced Tea
Canned Fishtown Iced Tea is poured by Interstate Drafthouse co-owner Mike McCloskey into a custom-made ceramic carton.
Long Island has its iced tea. Why shouldn’t Fishtown? Created in 2013 at Interstate Drafthouse on Palmer Street, Fishtown Iced Tea spikes a 16-ounce carton of Arctic Splash iced tea with a shot of Jim Beam bourbon, turning a childhood lunchbox staple into an adult version of the sugary, dangerously smooth cocktail. Its roots are distinctly regional. Besides milk, Lehigh Valley Dairy, Wawa, Swiss Farms, and Turkey Hill also sold iced tea in pint cartons that generations of Philadelphians grew up drinking.
During the pandemic, when Pennsylvania temporarily allowed to-go cocktails, Interstate sold enough Fishtown Iced Tea to keep the bar afloat. In 2022, the popularity inspired a canned version from Rectified Spirits, made with vodka, rum, tequila, and triple sec instead of bourbon.
In a twist, the ready-to-drink cocktail debuted just as Lehigh Valley discontinued Arctic Splash cartons, ending an era for the drink that inspired it.
Edamame dumplings from Buddakan
The edamame dumplings at Buddakan.
One of Buddakan’s signature dishes is the edamame dumpling, filled with mashed soybeans and served in a truffled Sauternes-shallot broth. Michael Schulson, then chef de cuisine at Stephen Starr’s Old City destination, came up with the idea in 2000 while developing the menu for Starr’s next project, Pod, whose opening in University City was six months away. “Every dish I made, Stephen would say, ‘We’re putting this on the menu at Buddakan,’” Schulson said. “I’d say, ‘What about Pod?’”
The original version was an edamame ravioli, featuring a yellow pasta wrapper in a caramelized Sauternes-shallot broth, transforming what was then an unfamiliar ingredient to many American diners — young Japanese soybeans — into one of Buddakan’s signature dishes. (It made it onto Pod’s menu, too.) When Buddakan New York opened in 2006 with Schulson leading the kitchen, the ravioli evolved into the translucent har gow-style dumpling that has since become its best-known form, before it later arrived on the menu in Philadelphia. It’s still a bestseller.
After leaving Starr, Schulson adapted the concept at his restaurant Sampan, serving edamame dumplings in a caramelized shallot and sake broth, and later at Double Knot with truffles.
Cheesesteak egg rolls
The cheesesteak egg roll from Continental Mid-town.
Stuff steak and cheese into an egg-roll wrapper, deep-fry it, and you’ve got one of Philadelphia’s signature mashups: the cheesesteak egg roll.
They’re everywhere now, from neighborhood pubs to white-tablecloth steakhouses, and go by “spring rolls” at some places, but their rise can be traced to two nearly simultaneous Philadelphia stories in the mid-1990s.
One unfolded at the old Four Seasons Hotel on the Parkway. Former chef David Jansen said that after preparing a banquet for the New York Rangers in 1994 or 1995, prep cook Mui Lim put leftover cheesesteak filling into spring roll wrappers and fried them as a snack for the kitchen crew. They went on the menu soon after at the hotel’s Swann Lounge. Today’s Four Seasons Philadelphia, now at the Comcast Technology Center, serves wagyu cheesesteak spring rolls with sweet-and-spicy pepper relish.
The other story played out in Old City, where the novelty became a menu staple at the Starr-owned Continental. In 1996, Starr hired Sam “Chef Sammy D” DeMarco to develop dishes for the year-old restaurant. DeMarco already served a Philly cheesesteak dumpling at First, his New York restaurant, but Starr wanted something original.
DeMarco turned the dumpling into a cheesesteak spring roll. “It was taking a classic, nostalgic American snack and presenting it in a fresh way,” said DeMarco, now executive chef at Bungalows Resort in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Like the old Buzz Aldrin cocktail, the roll became a classic. Starr said Continental Mid-town, near Rittenhouse Square, now sells 500 a week.
From the Continental, the idea spread rapidly. Davio’s owner Steve DiFillippo was joining staff for a preshift meal at his former Center City Philadelphia location shortly after it opened in 1999 when chef David Boyle served cheesesteak egg rolls that his wife had made at home. DiFillippo insisted that they be added to the bar menu, overruling managers who felt that they were too déclassé for a posh steakhouse. The Boston-based Davio’s turned the line into a frozen-food item, selling millions through supermarkets and QVC until rising beef prices during the pandemic made them impractical, DiFillippo said. They’re still on the restaurant menus in King of Prussia and elsewhere.
Though DiFillippo copyrighted the name “Philly Cheese Steak Spring Rolls” in 2002, “I’m not going to claim I invented anything,” he said. “But I was the first one to take them into stores and really commercialize them.”
This Fourth of July will be unlike any in recent memory. As the nation marks its 250th anniversary, Philadelphia and the surrounding region are packed with celebrations — and fireworks displays. From the city and suburbs to South Jersey and the Shore, there are dozens of opportunities to catch a show.
Whether you’re staying in Philadelphia, heading to the suburbs, or spending the holiday down the Shore, here’s where to find Fourth of July fireworks across the region.
Wawa Welcome America: 🕙 July 4, 5 p.m. 📍Christina Aguilera and Philadelphia native Jill Scott headline a concert followed by fireworks, 2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia, Pa., 19130, 🌐 july4thphilly.com
Conshohocken Fireworks Display: 🕙 July 3, 9:15 p.m., 📍The fireworks will take place at Sutcliffe Park, but the borough is closing the park and surrounding areas to the public due to the size of the display. (They advise you to watch the show from another vantage point in town.), 🌐 conshohockenpa.gov
“It tastes like oil from a real cheesesteak wrapper,” proclaims the slogan of Mama-Tee’s Philly cheesesteak-flavored extra virgin olive oil.
Mama-Tees are community fridges, notable for their bright yellow paint jobs, that are scattered around Philadelphia. The cheesesteak oil ($19) is part of a fundraiser to combat food insecurity locally, along with three other flavored oils: Basil Bliss, Truffle Love, and Pepper Pleaser. Proceeds go to helping fill the fridges with food. So if the oil prompts cheesesteak-flavored burps, it would do so in the name of a noble cause.
We at The Inquirer had to do a taste test.
Is this merely a novelty or could it have legitimate culinary applications?
The ingredients of the Philly cheesesteak-flavored oil intriguingly are only “extra virgin olive oil” and “onion flavor.” How could these two ingredients, neither of which involves cheese nor steak, encompass the nuanced experience of consuming an actual cheesesteak? The Inquirer sought to get to the bottom of these questions.
“It smells like a deli case,” said food editor Margaret Eby. “There is a cheesiness to it. It’s like that cheese oil that gets trapped in a charred, upturned pepperoni cup on your pizza.”
“I think it should be called ‘hoagie oil,’” said food reporter Beatrice Forman.
“It is like unwrapping a hoagie,” agreed critic Craig LaBan. “When you get the vinaigrette soaking through the wrapper. And it tastes like French’s fried onions, but burnt.”
“I don’t know what it could be used for,” said food reporter Michael Klein.
“It tastes like old fryer oil,” grimaced reporter Ryan Briggs. “It’s gravitating toward capturing that cheesesteak shop smell when they’re frying all the onions.”
Reporter Max Marin poured the oil over his youtiao, a savory Chinese cruller, while at lunch at Lau Kee in Chinatown. “It’s got a chemical taste that makes me think there’s a number in one of its ingredients.” But does it make the youtiao taste like a cheesesteak? “It does not.”
Inquirer reporter Max Marin pours Mama-Tee’s Philly cheesesteak-flavored oil on his youtiao at Lau Kee.
Various Philly chefs were more open-minded in the cheesesteak oil’s applications.
“I think the flavor is great,” said Juan De Ocampo, sous chef at Fairmount’s Manong, as he poured the oil onto a pile of fried shrimp chips.
“I kind of like the cheesesteak oil,” said dancerobot’s Justin Bacharach. “It’s pungent and although I don’t cook with olive oil, I would use it to add a little funk and fat to a dish, like to dress an antipasto with South Philly vibes like sharp provolone and soppressata, and in the Japanese canon, I think it would be fun drizzled on top of a gyudon (beef and onions over rice) where you’d normally use mayu (a Japanese scorched black garlic oil).”
“It feels really heavy,” said Melissa Fernando, the chef behind long-running pop-up Sri’s Company. “In Sri Lankan food, we mostly use coconut oil to cook, but I suppose I’d use this to sauté onions and garlic.”
That perceived “heaviness” is easily addressed, according to 637 Sushi Club’s Kevin Yanaga, no stranger to unusual pairings. “I just need a lemon or something acidic with it. I could then use it on a fluke crudo. It’s rough and funky on its own, but salt and acid would help.”
After careful consideration of these diverse opinions, the Mama-Tee cheesesteak oil had only one test remaining to undergo: a side-by-side comparison between it and the oil from an actual cheesesteak wrapper.
A Del Rossi’s cheesesteak (wit onions, of course) was summoned. A wrapper was licked. A shot of cheesesteak oil was taken. The wrapper had the distinct advantage of beefiness. When applied directly to the cheesesteak, the oil oddly enhanced the cheesesteak’s flavor. And another thing the oil had in common with a real cheesesteak? Real cheesy, oniony burps after consumption.
A Del Rossi’s cheesesteak and Mama-Tee’s cheesesteak oil, consumed in unison.
Mama-Tee’s Philly cheesesteak oil ($19) can be purchased at Wegmans in King of Prussia, though more locations may be added soon.
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.
A new Delco sign is shown at Pilgrim Gardens in Drexel Hill on June 16.
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.
Brian Finnegan, CEO and president, at Brixmor Property Group, at the Roosevelt Mall in Northeast Philadelphia.
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.
Roosevelt Mall in Northeast Philadelphia is shown in earlier days, long before Brixmor Property Group remodeled the property.
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.
Roosevelt Mall in Northeast Philadelphia is shown in earlier days, long before Brixmor Property Group remodeled the property.
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.
Annual customer visits to Roosvelt Mall have increased 13% since Sprouts organic grocer opened there in 2024.
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.
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.
As seen in September, the Macy’s in the Wanamaker Building in Center City now sits empty. It closed last year.
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.”
When Coach opened a store at the Cherry Hill Mall in November, mall executives were ecstatic — even though it’s been 85 years since the high-end retailer was founded.
Coach is as hot as ever. And its new shop in Cherry Hill is just another sign of the South Jersey mall’s success, according to leaders with Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust (PREIT), which owns the complex.
“Cherry Hill is clearly a dominant fashion property,” Paula Charles, PREIT’S first vice president of leasing, said in a recent interview.
In the competitive Philadelphia market, “the better retailers have gravitated toward the better assets,” including Cherry Hill, added Joe Aristone, PREIT’s chief revenue officer.
They noted that top-tier retailers increasingly include legacy brands — long-established companies like Coach, Zara, and Levi’s, that are making a nostalgic, social media-fueled comeback with younger consumers.
Employee Alex Costa (right) assists Alessandra Bruno as she shops for purses with husband, Luke Baur, and their 20-month-old daughter, Rosalina, at the Coach store at the Cherry Hill Mall.
In the Philadelphia area, these retailers have maintained a presence along shopping corridors in Center City and at higher-performing malls like Cherry Hill and King of Prussia, which is owned by Simon Property Group.
Prior to the Cherry Hill opening, Coach operated shops in King of Prussia and Marlton, as well as off-price locations at the Philadelphia Premium Outlets near Pottstown, the Gloucester Premium Outlets in Blackwood, and the Tanger Outlets in Atlantic City. The brand also has an outpost at the Philadelphia International Airport.
Coach spokespeople did not return requests for comment about their investment in the region.
PREIT executives declined to comment on sales so far at their new Coach store, but said brand and mall executives are pleased with how the store is doing — and what that means going forward.
“Coach has had a strategy to make sure that they capture Gen Z,” a demographic that PREIT executives also want to attract and retain as they age, Charles said.
Why Gen Z and millennials love Coach
Joe Williams, of Magnolia, N.J., buys a handbag for his daughter, Samantha Williams, at the Coach store at the Cherry Hill Mall.
About two years ago, Breana Stringer, now 26, noticed that many of her friends were going out with Coach bags. And when she’d open TikTok, she said, the platform’s algorithm showed her videos of other users’ Coach collections.
Up until that point, the Fishtown resident had been an accessory minimalist: “I was very much an ‘if it doesn’t fit in my pocket, I’m not bringing it’” type of person.
But Stringer said she was influenced by her friends and TikTok to start buying Coach bags, mostly secondhand (though she has received new Coach bags as gifts). She has come to enjoy styling them with her outfits.
To Stringer, Coach’s appeal to Gen Z consumers is simple, she said: “They’re affordable in terms of a luxury name brand, and they’re vintage styles.”
New Coach bags start at $95 for a short shoulder bag, while larger purses can cost $500 or more. At outlet stores and secondhand shops, prices are lower.
In South Philly, Stephanie Gonzalez, 33, has restored and resold dozens of vintage Coach bags, mostly to Gen Z and millennial women.
She said these women see the Coach brand as “timeless.”
For Gen Z, “what is happening is they are really into Y2K, late-’90s, early-’90s nostalgia,” Gonzalez said. “TikTok has been a big hub for people” to share their love of Coach and brands that were popular in those years.
As for other legacy brands, Stringer said some of her Gen Z friends have also started wearing Cartier rings, which have been around since the mid-1800s and can cost more than $1,000. It’s a trend Stringer has yet to get behind, she said, because she has a tendency to lose small accessories: “I’m less likely to lose a bag.”
How legacy brands are boosting Philly-area malls
Products are displayed at the Coach store at the Cherry Hill Mall.
Cherry Hill Mall isn’t the only local shopping center to have welcomed new legacy retailers recently.
In the past six months, Abercrombie & Fitch, Columbia Sportswear, Lacoste, and New Balance have opened new stores at the King of Prussia Mall, and an Adidas outpost is also set to open there soon.
At the Philadelphia Premium Outlets, Hugo Boss, Marc Jacobs, and New Balance have opened stores in the past year, while the Gloucester Premium Outlets in Blackwood have added New Balance and Columbia locations. Like the King of Prussia Mall, both outlet malls are owned by Simon Property Group.
Typically, these re-energized brands are attracted to places where other similar companies have already set up shop, say the PREIT executives who help shape the tenant mix at the Cherry Hill Mall.
And they said this cyclical effect further cements the region’s dominant retail centers as shopping destinations.
“There is so much media out there as it relates to closed malls,” said Aristone, the chief revenue officer. Many of the surviving malls, however, are thriving, he said, thanks in part to these legacy brands.
Delaware’s only Nordstrom store is set to close its doors next month.
The Christiana Mall location will shutter on April 30, the company confirmed in an email on Monday. The closure was reported over the weekend by the Delaware News Journal.
“We believe we’ll be best able to serve customers in the area by leveraging our surrounding stores and through our digital channels,” Nordstrom said in a statement.
The two-story, 123,000-square-foot department store opened in the Newark mall 15 years ago. The high-end retailer is one of four anchors alongside J.C. Penney, Macy’s, and Target.
Once Nordstrom closes, the nearest full-price location will be more than 30 miles away at the King of Prussia Mall. The company’s discount counterpart, Nordstrom Rack, operates a store nearby at the Christiana Fashion Center complex in Newark.
Nordstrom Rack in Center City is shown in 2018. Recently, the retailer has been expanding its off-price footprint.
The retailer has announced plans to open more than a dozen additional locations this year. They include Nordstrom Rack stores in the Main Street at Exton shopping center and at the Promenade at Granite Run in Media.
At the Christiana Mall, Nordstrom said it is “committed to taking care of our employees through this transition, including supporting those who are interested in finding another role within Nordstrom.” It did not say how many people would lose their jobs.
A search of Delaware’s online database of WARN Act notices, which are required in advance of closures and mass layoffs, did not yield any results.
Christiana Mall is billed by its owner, General Growth Properties (GGP), formerly Brookfield Property Partners, as “one of the most productive retail centers in the country.” The developers say that each year 10 million people visit the 1.2-million-square foot “tax-free shopping destination” that is home to more than 140 stores. Delaware has no state or local sales tax.
The Christiana Mall is shown in 2018. Its owners say 10 million people visit the Newark shopping destination each year.
A GGP spokesperson declined to comment on Nordstrom’s departure and said it was too soon to discuss what’s next for the space.
The news of the closure comes amid an uncertain time for the retail industry.
After decades in business, Saks Fifth Avenue in Bala Cynwyd is set to close next month after its parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In another segment of the retail industry, West Chester-based home shopping network QVC Group, according to a Bloomberg report, is considering filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to reorganize billions in debt.
At AMS Surgery Center in suburban Montgomery County, patients can park right in front of the entrance, walk through just a few doors, and undergo cardiac procedures in a sterile operating room with equipment as high-tech as in any hospital procedure room.
In the year and a half since its first patient underwent a cardiac catheterization, the center has performed more than 1,000 cardiac procedures that previously required patients to go to full-service hospitals.
The Horsham center showcases a new front as sophisticated healthcare procedures move to freestanding outpatient medical facilities, promising to save patients money. The shift also adds to the financial pressures facing the region’s hospital-centered health systems.
Four centers have opened or are in the final stages of approvals in Southeastern Pennsylvania. Their arrival comes after state lawmakers in 2022 broadly expandedthe types of procedures allowed outside hospitals to include cardiac catheterizations, pacemaker implants, and other treatments that until then had to be done in a hospital.
Pennsylvania is the first Northeastern state to allow the minimally invasive procedures in freestanding surgery centers, but Southern states like Florida, Louisiana, and Texas have permitted the practice for decades, experts said. Research has found surgery centers generally are as safe as outpatient departments in hospitals.
An independent physicians group, Bryn Mawr Medical Specialists Association, opened Heart & Vascular Center of the Main Line — the Philadelphia region’s first such center — in late 2022. in Bryn Mawr. AMS Surgery Center in Horsham performed its first procedure in the fall of 2024, initially treating only Medicare patients. Itadded patients with private insurance last summer.
The market has continued torapidly expand:ReVaMP Heart & Vascular Surgery Center in Center City started treating Medicare patients last fall. The Ambulatory Cardiovascular Center of Pennsylvania, near King of Prussia, expects to perform its first procedures on patients next month.
Medicare pays the centers about a third less than hospital outpatient departments for the same procedures, but the centers have significantly lower costs, allowing them to be profitable. Medicare pays physicians the same wherever procedures are done.
Independent cardiology groups traditionally have performed interventional procedures, such as implanting stents and pacemakers, in hospitals. Some are jumping at the opportunity to expand through the surgery centers, where they can have a financial stake in the entire operation.
“We’ve always been very fiercely independent, fiercely entrepreneurial, and patient-centered,” said Richard Borge, an AMS interventional cardiologist who is medical director for the group’s surgery center.
How much cardiac care — among the most profitable business lines for hospitals — will move out of hospital outpatient departments remains unknown. But cardiac surgical clinics will not take over heart care to the extent seen when outpatient orthopedic centers began offering hip and joint replacements,predicted Lauren Clementi, a senior vice president at Kaufman Hall, a Chicago consulting firm.
“This one’s a little trickier because the acuity of patients,” she said.
Cardiologists will continue treating many patients with complex medical needs in hospitals, which remain the only option for riskier procedures such as open-heart surgeries.
Gregory Schmitt went to AMS Surgery Center to undergo procedures for a heart stent and stents in both legs.The retired machine-shop owner, who lives in Ivyland, called such centers great for patients.
“I highly recommend it. It’s much easier than trying to navigate a hospital,” Schmitt said.
How we got here
Healthcare has been shifting awayfrom requiring overnight hospital stays, even for common procedures like cataract surgery.The trend starteddecades ago with same-day procedures in hospitals, followed by the rise of freestanding surgery centers.
In cardiology, people now commonly receivestents and pacemakers as outpatient care. But until recently, doctors had to implant the devices in a hospital.
“Once upon a time, every patient we cathed had to spend the night in the hospital,” said veteran cardiologist Mark Victor, referring to cardiac catheterization.
With the rise of outpatient procedures,Victor said, the question for many clinicians became: “If they’re hospital ambulatory, why do they have to be in the hospital at all?”
Victor has long advocated for the adoption of outpatient cardiology proceduresas the CEO of Cardiology Consultants of Philadelphia. Thelarge cardiology practice joined last year a national private-equity backed group, Cardiovascular Logistics, and will soon start performing surgical procedures at the center opening near King of Prussia.
In 2020, Medicare started paying for outpatient cardiac catheterizations — which entail running a catheter through a blood vessel in the thigh or wrist to examine the heart and install devices like stents.
Richard Borge is medical director of AMS Cardiology Surgery Center in Horsham, whose arrival is moving advanced cardiac care from hospitals to outpatient clinics.
Even then, Pennsylvania rules required cardiac catheterizations to occur in an acute-care hospital, according to Stephen Abresch, director of government affairs for the Ambulatory Surgery Center Association, a national trade group in Alexandria, Va.
Pennsylvania lawmakers cleared the way for expansion byeliminating that restriction in 2022 as part of a broad expansion of what the state’s surgery centers were allowed to do. “It had been a quarter century since the state had gone in and reviewed that,” he said.
The Heart & Vascular Center of the Main Line has scheduled its first cardiac ablations this week. Horsham’s AMSaims to start offering those procedures in June. Victor’s King of Prussia groupexpects to add ablations in the future as well.
Impact on hospitals
It is too soon to know how the new surgery centers will impact the region’s existing health systems. In some cases, independent cardiologists generate significant patient numbers forhospitals’ cath labs.
After Bryn Mawr Medical Specialists opened its cardiovascular surgery center near Main Line Health’s Bryn Mawr Hospital, the private group performed fewer procedures on low-risk patients at the hospital.
To sustain patient volumes, Main Line has increased collaboration with other physician practices, while continuing to treat an“older patient population, whose more complex health conditions require the advanced expertise and emergency support only a hospital setting can provide,” officials said in a statement.
In Horsham, most of the patients coming to AMS would have gone toJefferson Abington Hospital before the surgery center opened in partnership with Atria Health, a private-equity backed group, Borge said.
Jefferson declined to comment.
King of Prussia’s Ambulatory Cardiovascular Center of Pennsylvania is opening through anunusual four-way partnership involving Cardiology Consultants of Philadelphia, Cardiovascular Logistics, SCA (a unit of UnitedHealth’s Optum), and the University of Pennsylvania Health System.
“Ours is not going to seriously impact any one hospital system, which they’re all relieved about,” said Victor, who is also president of the Mid-Atlantic region for Cardiovascular Logistics. He said other health systems were invited to invest in the surgery center, but only Penn did so.
Penn declined to comment for this article. On the Alvarez & Marsal What’s Your Moonshot podcast, the health system’s chief operating officer, Michele Volpe, recently said the system needs ”to move a bit faster in taking much of the work that we are doing in inpatient ORs and moving them into outpatient or ambulatory freestanding ORs.”
AMS Cardiology’s ambulatory surgery center in Horsham is one of four new cardiovascular surgery centers in Southeastern Pennsylvania.
Center City’s ReVaMP Health & Vascular Surgery Center wantsto bring in cardiologists from nonaffiliated practices,and even the city’s big health systems. The facility opened last year, spearheaded by Re-Vasc Med Professionals’ two interventional cardiologists in partnership with Surgery Partners, a publicly traded manager of surgery centers nationwide.
“I’m 100% sure this is going to be the trend of the future,” Re-Vasc CEO and founder Jon George said.
A health insurer’s perspective
Richard Snyder, a top executive at Independence Blue Cross, the largest health insurer in Southeastern Pennsylvania, has for years watched joint replacements and other procedures shift from hospitals to lower-cost surgery centers.
The financial impact goes beyond the lower prices at surgery centers, he said, expecting that hospitals will not simply cede these patients to new competitors.
Some hospitals might decide to take a lower payment for outpatient procedures. “Traditionally, that happens when we have capacity in lower-cost settings,” he said.
At the same time, Medicare is pushing to pay the same price for services, wherever they are performed. “Hospitals, by necessity, will need to move some things to lower-cost settings in order to not lose money on them,” Snyder said.
