BENSALEM, Pa. — Neshaminy Mall closed for good Saturday after 58 years, and the owners who plan to tear down about half of it have yet to bring a redevelopment plan to Bensalem Township Council.
The mall has not been on a council agenda since tenants were told to leave. The agendas for council’s four meetings from Sept. 14 through Oct. 26 carry no item about it, and it came up in none of the three sets of minutes posted so far.
Boscov’s, the 24-screen AMC theater and Barnes & Noble stay open. The owners, Paramount Realty and Edgewood Properties, said when they bought the mall in 2024 that they would keep those stores and two restaurants in the parking lot, according to a summary of their plans Edgewood posted on its website.
What comes next
That summary said about half the mall would be torn down, that the owners were exploring residential and medical uses and that they would present a plan to the township. They bought the 108.5-acre property from Brookfield Properties for $27.5 million in July 2024, not including the former Macy’s building. Paramount’s website lists the mall as “under development.”
A May 2025 sketch plan in a Paramount marketing document showed an “open air main street” with new stores, a four-story hotel and about 700 homes, LevittownNow reported in October. The site said it was unclear whether the plan was still current.
Council President Ed Tokmajian Jr. said in a video posted on his Instagram that the developer was “working through a lot of the details,” and Council Secretary Joseph Wenzel Jr. said he would like the site to become “something more like a town center.”
“There’s a lot that still needs to happen, but we are excited about the possibilities and, most importantly, want to hear from you,” Tokmajian wrote with the video, asking residents to suggest a name for the new site.
Why it emptied
The mall opened in 1968 with Sears and Strawbridge & Clothier as anchors. The Strawbridge store, a Macy’s since 2006, closed in April 2017, and Sears closed in January 2019. By 2024 more than half the stores were vacant, and in September tenants were told to be out by Oct. 31.
“It seems like late 2022/early 2023 was when things really got dire,” wrote GopherPA, the Reddit user who posted 14 photos from the final hours on the r/deadmalls forum. “Chick fil A, FYE, and the arcade all closed at the end of 2022, and it seems like the stores started dropping like flies after that.”
“Was a great mall in its heyday. Finding a parking spot was a challenge if you could believe it,” another user, philaman01, wrote in the thread.
A piece that survives
Bensalem Township said Thursday that the Washington Crossing diorama from the mall’s “Freedom Wall” has been restored and put on display at the Mercer Museum in Doylestown, in a project funded by Penn Community Bank. WHYY filmed the dioramas days before the closing:
