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Drone video of the demolition of Wayne Hills Mall
Drone video of the demolition of Wayne Hills Mall
Tariq Zehawi and Danielle Parhizkaran, NorthJersey.com
WAYNE – The Burlington department store at Wayne Hills Mall will close this fall and move to other premises in the same mall.
The conspicuous building leaving Burlington has almost never been empty.
Now the New Jersey-based chain, once known primarily as a retailer of coats and winter jackets, will lease the much smaller retail space that housed a Toys R Us store until it closed six years ago.
Burlington officials did not respond to a request for comment on the job cuts, but an announcement on the company’s website says the new store will open Nov. 1. The chain, which reported net sales of $9.7 billion last year, has 51 stores across the state, including one in a shopping center on Willowbrook Boulevard.
Meanwhile, the iconic bubble letters that spell out the word “Toys R Us” on the front and rear facades of the mall’s 3,500-square-foot building have been removed, and a construction crew was spotted working on the roof this week.
Burlington opened nearly 30 years ago in the shopping center at Berdan Avenue and Hamburg Turnpike, just in time for the 1995 Christmas shopping rush.
“This mall is going to thrive,” then-Mayor David Waks told a newspaper reporter in September of that year. “It’s good for them and good for everyone in Wayne.”
Officials were optimistic because Burlington filled a huge gap.
The 105,000-square-foot anchor space had been vacated months earlier by Meyer Brothers Department Store, an independent retailer that was going out of business.
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Andrew Steiger, managing director of Levco Associates, a limited liability company that owns the 94-acre shopping center, declined to comment on the future of the existing Burlington location. The mall also has a Dunkin’ drive-thru, an LA Fitness Club, a Poke Bowl restaurant and a ShopRite supermarket.
Philip DeVencentis is a local reporter for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access to the most important news in your local community, subscribe or activate your digital account today.
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