By Ken Knickerbocker

The Exton Square Mall holds a special place in the hearts of a vast number of Chester County residents. It has been a part of our lives for decades.

Recent comments from Joseph Coradino – Chairman and CEO of the Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust (PREIT), which owns Exton Square Mall, as well as other suburban Philadelphia malls in Plymouth Meeting and Willow Grove – raised more than a few eyebrows and cast the future of Exton Square Mall in doubt.

So has the fact that one-third of the mall’s approximately 300,000 square feet of retail space sits empty.

“It’s a property that in the longer term probably doesn’t want to be a mall,” Coradino said on PREIT’s recent earnings call for the fourth quarter of 2018. “And we’re trying to sort through our options at this point, which could include moving the asset out of the company.”

Coradino did not offer much clarity on the mall’s future, but he certainly understands the value of the asset, considering that it sits at the proverbial crossroads of Chester County.

“It’s a phenomenal piece of real estate (that) sits at the intersection of Route 100 and Route 30 in Exton, in Chester County, the fastest-growing county in the state,” he said.

To put the property’s value in perspective, 27 developers submitted bids when PREIT solicited proposals to develop the land on which Whole Foods Market now stands. (PREIT recently sold the 55,000-square-foot building for $8.1 million but retained ownership of the land.) Interestingly, though, the mall – nor the land underneath it – is included in PREIT’s “core assets” category, as it joins the ranks of other under-performing malls in upstate Pennsylvania and southern Virginia in PREIT’s portfolio.

In 2018, PREIT sold four undeveloped acres across the access road from the Whole Foods Market to Hanover Company, a Houston-based developer and manager of high-quality, multi-family apartments, for $10.3 million. Construction is already underway with the framework of the first couple of floors already taking shape along Route 100.

In the press release it issued to announce the sale to Hanover, PREIT stated its intention to “transform (the) property into remarkable and innovative environments, with retail at the core.”

Coradino said that PREIT is exploring several options regarding the mall, including selling it, as well as forming a joint venture, possibly with a hotel chain, to further develop the property.