The Franklin Mills mall opened in Northeast on this week in Philly history

The design of the Franklin Mills mall was inspired by disaster.

“The mall was built in the fashion of a modified train wreck,” Jeffery Sneddon, the mall’s general manager, told The Inquirer in 1989, the year it opened. “There are several buildings connected at odd angles.”

Years later, the inspiration for the mall’s design underwent a little revisionist history, with publicists claiming the mall’s shape was inspired by the lightning bolts courted by Ben Franklin.

Appropriate, as change would ultimately become the story of the mall in Northeast Philadelphia.

At the outset, the goal of the design was to break up the long stretches of the single-level space.

The result was a mile of winding concourse lined with 250 storefronts, and organized so a shopper would always have merchandise shoved into their face.

The 1.8 million-square-foot mall was built at Knights and Woodhaven Roads on the former Liberty Bell racetrack site. The build cost was $300 million, about $773 million in today’s money.

When the doors opened on May 11, 1989, to the then-world’s largest outlet mall, the shops were 70% leased, with 120 stores rented by shoe and clothing outfits, restaurants, and anchor stores like a J.C. Penney Outlet and Sears Outlet.

The title of world’s largest had previously belonged to the Potomac Mills mall, which was a prototype in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Both shopping meccas were the brainchild of Washington-based commercial real estate tycoons Herbert S. Miller and Richard L. Kramer.

The duo wanted to build destination venues with value stores. And they paired that with an aggressive marketing campaign that targeted tourists, as well as shoppers who lived up to 60 miles away.

And it worked. Far Northeast Philadelphia became a destination in the shopping mall era. They’d later add a movie theater, a skate park, and a Jillian’s restaurant and arcade. The mall would host autograph signings and celebrity appearances. And throughout the 1990s and early aughts, it was a popular hangout for discount shoppers and teenagers, and attracted nearly 20 million shoppers yearly.

But by the 2010s, it started to lose its charm. It changed names multiple times, became a haven for flash mobs, and saw its share of Black Friday melees, and a fatal shooting in the food court.

The fall of the mall concept and the rise of online shopping added to its financial issues, and the building is in receivership as debt holders determine next steps, according to the Business Journal.

John Chism, manager of Granite Run Mall in Middletown Township back in ’89, didn’t see the mall’s value at the time.

“Malls are in business to sell,” he said, “not to be attractions for sightseers.”

But that was the innovation of the Franklin Mills.

It aimed to be both.