opinion

Ocean County Mall must reinvent itself: BERGMANN

So, Sears will soon be leaving the Ocean County Mall. That’s hardly shocking news given the well-publicized financial troubles of the parent company and the challenges that face many traditional malls across the country, particularly those that have failed to reinvest in their modernization and change the mix of tenants to better reflect changing tastes and consumer trends.

Will the loss of Sears mark the beginning of the end of Ocean County Mall as we know it? In the video above, plans are outlined for many other malls to meet the same fate of saying goodbye to Sears. If so, it could be a good thing — if it moves the mall’s owner, Simon Property Group, to develop an entirely new game plan for the property.

Simon, the nation’s largest mall owner with more than 200 properties nationwide, certainly has the resources and the know-how to make malls work. It operates 14 malls in New Jersey, including the Jersey Shore Premium Outlets, the Menlo Park Mall and the Liberty Village Marketplace Outlets.

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To be sure, transforming the Ocean County Mall, which has suffered from a lack of investment since it was built more than 40 years ago, won’t come cheaply. It is estimated that as many as a quarter of the nation's 1,200 malls will close in the next five years. If the Ocean County Mall is to buck the trend, it will have to reinvent itself, as other malls have done and as the Monmouth Mall to the north hopes to do.

Owners of the Monmouth Mall have proposed turning it into a walkable community, with indoor and outdoor corridors between shops, restaurants and space designed for entertainment. It also wants to surround the reconfigured mall with residential housing and places for medical offices and other services.

The demographics in Ocean County aren’t as favorable as some of the more successful malls in New Jersey, including Freehold Raceway Mall and the Short Hills Mall. But they are attractive enough to enable to make a mall in that Toms River footprint successful.

We hope the announcement by Sears will provide the impetus needed for Simon Property Group to come up with a creative plan to make the Ocean County Mall a showplace.