Redesigning Shopping Centers in the Delaware Valley: From Greyfields to Community Assets

Redesigning Shopping Centers in the Delaware Valley: From Greyfields to Community Assets

Product No.: 05023
Date Published: 06/2005

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The Delaware Valley has a plethora of shopping centers, with more being constructed each year. Current development patterns and retail trends are forcing tenants to abandon older shopping centers and relocate to new big-box regional centers and malls in outlying, growing townships. Over time, these older shopping centers have become vacant and present a blighting influence on their surrounding communities. Solutions to encourage revitalization and redesign can be impeded by a lack of knowledge by municipal officials on how to redevelop and renew these sites, working in concert with regional and local land use and transportation policies. This report and inventory identifies shopping centers, otherwise known as greyfields, in the region that are abandoned or which meet a definition of decline; and transportation, land use and zoning, and design recommendations to help communities reinvent these places into vibrant, mixed-use centers.

Geographic Area Covered: Pennsylvania Counties: Bucks, Delaware, Montgomery, Chester & Philadelphia New Jersey Counties: Burlington Camden, Mercer, Gloucester

Key Words: shopping center, greyfields, redevelopment, sprawl, mixed-use, gross leasable area (GLA), de-malling, design, ghostboxes, density, retailing, market power, strip mall, enclosed mall, suburbanization, main streets, lifestyle centers, greenfields and brownfields.

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