GLEN BURNIE MALL
Governor Ritchie Highway and East Ordnance Road
Anne Arundel County (Glen Burnie), Maryland
The fifth mall-type shopping center developed by Ohio's Edward J. DeBartolo Corporation was constructed on a 41.7-acre plot, located 7.2 miles south of center city Baltimore. The site was in an unincorporated section of Anne Arundel County known as Glen Burnie. The mall was designed by the DeBartolo Corporation's in-house architecture department.
Plans for GLEN BURNIE MALL were announced in January 1962. A thirty-store, fully-enclosed shopping complex would be anchored by a single-level Montgomery Ward on its south end. A 2-level J.C. Penney would anchor the mall's north end. By mid-1963, J.C. Penney had backed out of the project.
On February 13, 1963, a 2-level (161,100 square foot) Montgomery Ward became the first operational GLEN BURNIE MALL store. A (32,000 square foot) G.C. Murphy 5 & 10 held its grand opening on January 15, 1964. The Broumas Theatres Glen Burnie Mall Theatre showed its first feature on the same day.
By this time, there were eighteen stores and services. These included Webster men's wear, Bond Furniture, Glidden Decorating Center, Beacon Pharmacy, Carpet Fair, The Card Mart, Arcade Snack Bar and an A & P supermarket.
It would take 5 years for a second anchor store to be completed. A 1-level (89,000 square foot), Topps Discount City took the space originally plotted for J.C. Penney and opened for business on March 17, 1969. This store was shuttered in 1974. By September of the same year, the vacant Topps space had been leased as a Toys "R" Us (both Topps and Toys "R" Us being divisions of Interstate Stores).
A 3 million dollar face lift got underway at GLEN BURNIE MALL on July 1, 1981. The project would install a new roof, forty-two skylights, decorative lamp posts, quarry tile flooring and several ficus trees. The parking area would also be repaved.
On October 24, 1981, a fire damaged stores on the north end of the complex. The center, except for Montgomery Ward, was closed while repairs -and the remainder of the renovation- could be completed. A grand re-opening was held for the New GLEN BURNIE MALL on November 21, 1981. Forty-one stores and services included Chess King, Foxmoor Casuals, Record Bar, Revco Drugs and Zales Jewelers.
By this time, Toys "R" Us had been downsized into the eastern half of its original space. The store now encompassed 47,500 square feet. The western section was leased as a (49,000 square foot), Baltimore-based Epsteins department store. It welcomed first shoppers on March 2, 1983.
Epsteins was in operation until January 1991. The space sat vacant until November 18, 1994, when a Richfield, Minnesota-based Best Buy made its debut. A & P had reconfigured their space as an A-Mart and then Plus Food Store discount grocery. This went dark in September 1983.
The G.C. Murphy at GLEN BURNIE MALL, vacant since 1994, was shuttered, demolished and replaced by Dick's Sporting Goods. This 1-level (60,800 square foot) store held its grand opening in October 1995, as a mall-wide face lift was being done. The renovation was completed in November 1995.
Montgomery Ward went dark in March 2001. Its space was used for a Sticks 'n Stuff Furniture for 2 years. The mall was acquired by Annapolis-based Petrie Ross Ventures in August 2002. A large scale redevelopment was announced in mid-2003. Demolition commenced in August. A 1-level (123,700 square foot) Target was built in place of A & P and held its grand opening on October 10, 2004.
A block of thirteen inline stores replaced a razed Wards building. The rest of the complex was given a complete makeover, with many stores reoriented with outside entrances. A new name -CENTRE AT GLEN BURNIE- was bestowed in May 2004. A mall-wide dedication was held in the summer of 2005. The complex now encompassed approximately 428,300 leasable square feet, with forty-six retail spaces.
A major vacancy was created when Best Buy moved out, in January 2010. The store relocated into the CHESAPEAKE SQUARE strip center (across Governor Ritchie Highway); re-opening on January 30, 2010.
Petrie Ross Ventures morphed into a new entity, known as Petrie Richardson Ventures, in January 2015. They soon relinquished ownership of CENTRE AT GLEN BURNIE. The partially vacant shopping hub was acquired by a division of Greenwich, Connecticut's Starwood Property Trust in March 2016. They hired Jenkintown, Pennsylvania-based Goodman Properties as a managing agent.
A demalling renovation was proposed, that would raze the vacant Dick's structure and eastern half of the mall. The Toys "R" Us-hhgregg-Office Depot and Target buildings would remain intact along with the western store block. A new megaplex cinema would be built on space previously occupied by Dick's. Unfortunately, two CENTRE AT GLEN BURNIE tenants would not be part of a revitalized power center. In May 2017, the hhgregg chain went out of business. Toys "R" Us followed, in June 2018.
Sources:
The Baltimore Sun
http://www.petrieross.com / Petrie Ross Ventures (website on Internet Archive Wayback Machine)
https://www.cinematreaures.org
https://sdat.dat.maryland.gov / Anne Arundel County, Maryland
