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The Marketplace at Steamtown
Mall at Steamtown atrium during Office convention.jpg
Mall atrium during The Office convention, October 2007
Location Scranton, PA, United States
Coordinates 41°24′30″N 75°40′05″W / 41.40833°N 75.66806°W / 41.40833; -75.66806
Address 300 Lackawanna Avenue Scranton, Pennsylvania 18503
Opening date Halloween weekend 1993
Developer Scranton Mall Associates
Management Zamias Services, Inc.
Owner Steamtown 300 LLC
No. of stores and services 49 (2017) (70 at peak)
No. of anchor tenants 1 (3 at Peak, Boscov's, Montgomery Ward, The Globe Store)
Total retail floor area 555,815–563,774 square feet (51,636.9–52,376.3 m2)
No. of floors 2
Parking 2,441 spaces
Public transit access Bus transport COLTS bus: 12, 13, 14, 18, 21, 25, 26, 28, 29, 31, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 41, 42, 43, 45, 48, 52, 53, 54, 71, 72, 73, 96, 99
Website The Marketplace at Steamtown

The Marketplace at Steamtown is a shopping mall located in Scranton, Pennsylvania. It used to be called The Mall at Steamtown. This mall was planned in the 1980s to help make downtown Scranton a lively place again.

The mall officially opened in 1993. Its opening was even shown on the news channel CNN. The Governor of Pennsylvania at the time, Robert P. Casey, Sr., was there. He helped a lot to get the money and start the mall's development. The mall was built on land that used to be a large railroad yard. It is located on Lackawanna Avenue in the center of downtown Scranton.

The Marketplace at Steamtown has two floors. It also has a parking garage that runs along the mall. On the second floor, there is a food court. From the food court, you can look out over the Steamtown National Historic Site. There is also a special bridge that connects the food court to Steamtown. You might have seen this mall on the TV show The Office, which was set in Scranton.

The Mall's Story

The idea for The Mall at Steamtown came from Al Boscov. His store, Boscov's, needed a new home. So, Boscov's Department Stores and Shopco Advisory Corp worked together to build the mall. They called their group Scranton Mall Associates.

Building the mall cost about $90 million. Many old buildings had to be taken down to make space. Five buildings were even taken down all at once in a controlled explosion on April 5, 1992.

Changes in the 2000s

In 2000, a store called The Bon-Ton moved into the mall. Before that, it was in a different shopping center. A few years later, in 2003, a new group called Steamtown Mall Partners started managing the mall. The mall owners also tried to stop another shopping center, The Shoppes at Montage, from being built. But they lost in court.

Challenges in the 2010s

The Bon-Ton store closed its doors in January 2014. It had been in the mall for 13 years. Other stores like American Eagle and ATOS Chicken & Waffles also closed. Many other stores left the mall around this time. This included popular places like Cinnabon and Express.

Part of the mall's parking area had to be closed in 2014 because it was getting old. Fixing the parking areas was expected to cost a lot of money. The movie theater, Steamtown 8 Cinemas, also closed. It didn't make enough money to upgrade its projectors to digital. More stores, such as Abercrombie & Fitch and Hollister, closed in December 2014. By early 2015, many more stores had left. This meant a large part of the mall was empty.

Mall Ownership Changes

The mall faced big financial problems in 2013. The owners could not pay back a large loan of $40.5 million. Because of this, the mall went into a process called foreclosure in March 2014. Foreclosure means that the lender takes back the property because the loan wasn't paid.

The main reasons for this were the mall's debt and not enough stores paying rent. Also, other shopping centers like The Shoppes at Montage and Viewmont Mall, along with online shopping, created a lot of competition.

Boscov's department store, whose owner Al Boscov was part of the mall's management group, wanted to buy the mall. However, they couldn't agree on a price. Even with these problems, the Boscov's store at Steamtown was doing very well.

The city of Scranton also had financial ties to the mall. The city owed over $3.6 million in loans that it had helped the mall get. Al Boscov and Boscov's Department Stores later donated money to help Scranton pay back some of these loans.

Public Sale and New Owners

A public sale, called a sheriff's sale, was held in July 2014. This is where a property is sold to pay off debts. The mall was put up for sale, but no one offered the high price that was asked. So, a company called LNR Partners bought the property for a very low price to cover its costs and taxes. After this sale, Zamias Services, Inc. started managing the mall.

In 2015, LNR Partners decided to put the mall up for auction again online. The starting price was much lower this time. There were concerns about how much money would be needed to fix up the mall, especially the parking garages.

The winning bid for the mall was $5.25 million. The auction lasted longer than expected because of all the bids. About a month later, it was announced that John Basalyga had bought the mall. He bought it for $5,512,500 (including a buyer's fee). He now runs the mall under the name Steamtown 300 LLC. Mr. Basalyga said that the mall would not be changed into something completely different at that time.

New Name and Future Plans

In May 2016, John Basalyga announced that the mall would get a new name: "The Marketplace at Steamtown." With the new name came new plans. He announced that one of the large empty store spaces would become a satellite campus for Luzerne County Community College.

Other new businesses were also planned to open. These included a movie theater, a large indoor playground, and a space for local sellers. The Marketplace at Steamtown is still active and growing today. New stores and businesses continue to join. Some of the places you can find there now are Delta Medix, Luzerne County Community College, Art Haus Cinemas, Electric City Steel Band Project, and Crunch Fitness.

A special area for local sellers, called the Scranton Public Market, opened in late 2017. This market has places to eat and craft sellers from all over the area. It also hosts many weekend events that bring in thousands of shoppers.

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