Village Mall: Willingboro, New Jersey on DeadMalls.com

VILLAGE MALL: WILLINGBORO, NJ

Dustin's Commentary:

User submitted July 30, 2020

In addition to the dearly departed Willingboro Plaza that is listed on this site, a smaller, but no less significant mall existed not even half a mile down the road from the WP called The Village Mall. I can't tell you when it was built, but I do have some memories of it when it was still in operation.

My family moved to Willingboro in the late 70s and both the WP and VM were in operation on the Route 130 corridor, but already rapidly declining. The VM had two "anchors" with an Acme Supermarket on the North end and a Woolco department store (an offshoot of the Woolworth's 5 & 10 stores) on the South end. There was a small indoor section which had an Eric Movie Theater (a chain of theaters based out of Philadelphia) and at one time vendors, but I can't actually remember any of vendor spots being open at that time. You could access the indoor mall section from the Woolco. Can't remember if you could access it from the Acme though.

I saw quite a few movies at the Eric Theater there--"The Big Brawl" with Jackie Chan, "Jaws 3-D", "Every Which Way But Loose" with Clint Eastwood, even a Bruce Lee mini-revival of "Return of the Dragon" and "Game of Death." Many of my early Birthday and Christmas gifts were bought at the Woolco.

When Woolco went out of business and the theater closed, the indoor section of the mall was sealed, basically forever. I can't recall it ever being open again. The Woolco store space eventually became a Caldors some years later. I can't recall if it became an Ames department store like so many former Caldors did. The Acme operated up until the 90s.

The shopping center sat empty for some time before being reborn at "The Grand Marketplace" in the mid-2000s. It's basically an indoor flea market, with most of the vendors coming from the then recently closed Pennsauken Mart down the road on Route 130. The GM changed hands several times and was auctioned off last December. The fate of it as a shopping center remains to be seen.