Nittany Mall facts for kids
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| Location | College Township, Pennsylvania United States |
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| Coordinates | 40°50′01.7″N 77°47′52.3″W / 40.833806°N 77.797861°W |
| Address | 2901 East College Avenue |
| Opening date | January 1968 |
| Developer | Crown American |
| Management | Namdar Realty Group |
| Owner | Namdar Realty Group |
| No. of stores and services | 46 |
| No. of anchor tenants | 1 |
| Total retail floor area | 532,160 square feet (49,439 m2) |
| No. of floors | 1 |
| Parking | Lighted lot |
| Public transit access |  CATA bus: HM, XB, XG |
The Nittany Mall is a large indoor shopping mall located in State College, Pennsylvania. It sits near the main roads Route 150 and Route 26, not far from I-99. The mall is special because it's only about four miles from Pennsylvania State University. This means it attracts both local families and college students looking for places to shop and hang out. Right now, the main store there is Dunham's Sports. Another big store, Macy's, closed its doors in 2020.
Contents
Mall History
Early Days: Opening and First Stores
The Nittany Mall first opened its doors in January 1968. It was built by a company called Crown American. When it first started, the mall had two main stores, known as "anchor stores." These were Grants and Penn Traffic. An anchor store is usually a very large department store that helps attract shoppers to the mall. Besides these two big stores, the mall also had about 30 smaller shops.
Growing Bigger: Sears and More Shops
In 1970, the Nittany Mall got its first big upgrade. A Sears store moved into the mall. Sears was a very popular department store at the time, and it moved from downtown State College to the mall. This expansion also added more than a dozen other smaller stores. The new Sears store was huge, with 45 different sections for merchandise and a 10-bay auto repair center.
Changes in the 1970s and 1980s
Over the years, some of the original stores changed. In 1976, the Grants store closed down. Another store called Gee Bee took over that space. Then, in 1982, Penn Traffic, one of the mall's first anchor stores, was sold. The new owners changed it into a Hess's department store.
Major Expansion and New Anchors
The Nittany Mall went through a big expansion and renovation between 1989 and 1990. During this time, a fourth anchor store was added: JCPenney. The Sears store also got bigger and moved to a new section of the mall. Its auto center moved to a separate building on the property.
Store Changes in the 1990s and 2000s
More changes happened in the 1990s. In 1992, Gee Bee became Value City. Then, in 1994, Hess's closed and was replaced by Bon-Ton Stores. Value City closed in 1997, and a new Kaufmann's department store was built in its place. In 2006, the Kaufmann's store at the mall changed its name and became a Macy's.
Recent Years: New Stores and Closures
The JCPenney store stayed at the mall until 2015. That year, JCPenney announced it would close many of its stores across the country. In 2016, a new store called Dunham's Sports opened in the old JCPenney spot. Dunham's Sports is one of the biggest sporting goods chains in the United States.
In 2017, Sears announced it would close many stores, including its Nittany Mall location. The Sears store closed in January 2018, but its auto center stayed open. In April 2018, the entire Bon-Ton stores chain closed down. These closures meant the mall was left with only two anchor stores: Dunham's Sports and Macy's. This was the first time since 1970 that the mall had so few main stores.
In September 2019, it was announced that Rural King, a department store chain, would open a new store in the mall in 2020. This new Rural King store would take over the large space where Sears used to be. Then, in January 2020, the Macy's store announced it would be closing in March 2020.
Images for kids
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Interior
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Mall south entrance
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Macy's
