Categories: Business, Schenectady County

People shop Guilderland’s Crossgates Mall for golf clubs, diamond rings, black lights, aspirin and overcoats.





They build stuffed toy bears and play arcade-style video games. They’ve watched both Harry Callahan and Harry Potter on mall movie screens.

Some lift weights, then lift beer glasses. Pretty soon, they’ll lift bowling balls.

The mall, between Western Avenue and Washington Avenue Extension, is observing its 30th anniversary this spring. The Capital Region’s dominant indoor shopping center opened for business with 110 stores and 875,000 square feet on Sunday, March 4, 1984.

It’s the stores, and the marketing campaigns that continue to bring new stores in, that keep the mall popular, management says.

The road to Crossgates’ grand opening ceremony was long and hard.

Syracuse-based Pyramid Crossgates Co., which first proposed the $85 million center in 1978, worked years to secure permits and permission from New York state and the town of Guilderland. Hundreds of Guilderland residents lined up against the project, many turning out during weeks of public hearings held in the spring and summer of 1980.

There were accusations, assertions, delays, decisions and hundreds of newspaper headlines. Among the Schenectady Gazette’s contributions in the latter category were “Two Ecologists See Crossgates as Threat to Pine Bush Future,” “War Over Crossgates Mall Pyramid’s Toughest So Far” and “Anti Mall Stickers Go High Profile.”

The plan survived. Crossgates opened with stores such as J.C. Penney, Caldor and Jordan Marsh.





Penney is still a tenant. The Bally Total Fitness health club, The Standard restaurant and Macy’s department store are now in the fold. So is relative newcomer Dave & Buster’s, a national restaurant/arcade-game chain.

On the way for fall is another entertainment venue — Latitude 360, which will offer 20 bowling lanes, a sports bar and live entertainment. World of Beer, a beer bar and retail store, and Brazilian steakhouse Texas de Brazil are coming this summer. Lord & Taylor, which departed a Crossgates anchor spot in 2003, will return this autumn.

Joseph D. Castaldo, Crossgates’ general manager for the past four years, believes aggressive marketing tactics used to sign new tenants — often stores or restaurants for whom the mall is their only local outlet — have helped keep Crossgates vibrant.

The mall is the third largest in the Pyramid portfolio, which includes 17 malls mostly in New York state. The Palisades Center in West Nyack and Destiny USA in Syracuse (formerly Carousel Center) are No. 1 and 2 on the company roster.

Castaldo believes new concepts are another reason for the local success. Thirty years ago, a bowling alley inside a shopping mall might have been considered an odd combination.

“We understand that people are craving entertainment,” Castaldo said, explaining the process that brought Latitude 360 to the Crossgates drawing board. “We just put one into Destiny USA called ‘Revolutions.’ Similar concept, different operator. And it has been packed. You can go bowling, you can do corporate events, you can do leagues.”

While innovation and recruitment have played parts in Crossgates’ success, so has good timing.

“We’ve been lucky enough to see the local economy be stable,” said Castaldo, who worked 10 years as general manager at Pyramid’s Poughkeepsie Galleria shopping mall before heading north to Guilderland. “That has a lot to do, obviously, with the stability of the government jobs, the nanotech technology — that growth. Because ultimately, you need the population to keep the property strong.”





Population and location have come at a price. Crossgates pays $5 million in taxes annually to the Guilderland School District and $2.5 million in town property taxes.

The mall was controversial from the start. The state’s environmental hearing lasted 81 sessions in 1980 and produced 17,000 pages of transcript. Pyramid officials said the mall would boost the local economy and employment without damage to existing businesses. The developer also contended the project would not harm the environment in the nearby Pine Bush section.

Opponents disagreed. People most demonstrative about their disapproval bought red and black stickers that proclaimed, “I’ll Never Shop at Crossgates.”

The project was approved on Dec. 16, 1981, when Guilderland’s Zoning Board of Appeals granted Pyramid a special-use permit — needed to begin construction — by a 4-3 vote. Even then, it wasn’t over. In early 1982, Supervisor Kevin A. Moss began his first term by trying to rezone the Crossgates site and block the project. The Town Board voted down his plan.

Construction began at the site in February 1983. On the first day of business, police reported heavy traffic as people who never took the anti-Crossgates vow filled the parking lot.

Mall officials and opposition went through another round of debate in the early 1990s, when expansion was the subject. A second level — which gave Crossgates a total of 1.52 million square feet — opened in 1994.

The mall, now 92 percent full, is looking for more space. Pyramid is seeking permission for a 20,000-square-foot expansion that will accommodate two more restaurants and another entertainment spot.

Guilderland town Supervisor Kenneth D. Runion was town attorney in 1984 and remembers the Crossgates saga as a “divisive” issue.

Advantages and disadvantages have come with the mall.

“I think they do work hard to be a good neighbor to the community, so they’re very good with the charitable organizations and the community events and things of that nature,” Runion said. “And they are one of our larger taxpayers, a contributor to the school system. On the other hand, our courts are extremely busy handling issues and dealing with issues from the mall.”

Guilderland added a third court judge this year.

“I would say that’s a result of activity that goes on at Crossgates Mall,” Runion said. “Back in the ’80s, before we had Crossgates, we had like an 11- or 12-person police force. Now it’s up to 34, and probably a third of that increase is due to the mall.”

Overall, Runion added, Crossgates is an asset to the town.

“Back in the ’80s and ’90s, we saw a lot of malls that didn’t keep up with the times and they ended up going out of business and being a burden to the community for a number of years before they got redeveloped,” Runion said. “Crossgates, I think, has done a good job trying to keep ahead of that and keeping modern and keeping fresh.”

Some people may say they don’t like going to shopping malls. Castaldo tries to change their minds.

“You try to create the atmosphere that is going to bring people in, so first and foremost, it’s the stores,” Castaldo said. “The fact that we have 100 stores in this mall that you can’t get to within a minimum of three hours in either direction is a huge advantage for us.”





Occasional updates are also part of the plan.

“We just replaced all the tile and the paint, all new soft seating areas — that makes a difference,” Castaldo said. “It’s got to be inviting and you have to give them a reason to want to get out and come here.”

Jesse Tron, a spokesman for the International Council of Shopping Centers in New York City, believes shopping centers are changing. More “lifestyle centers” are being built, open-air plazas like Mohawk Commons in Niskayuna and Stuyvesant Plaza in Albany.

It’s just evolution for the industry. “People need to find a different niche,” he said, adding developers may decide on the open-air approach rather than interior construction to avoid competition with an existing mall.

Tron has heard of mall experiments with nontraditional tenants.

“I’ve heard of glow-in-the-dark miniature golf. We’ve seen make-your-own pottery classes, karate schools, dental offices, walk-in health clinics,” he said. “We’ve seen carts and kiosks that just sell sunglasses. Now they’re selling food.”

That diversity, Tron believes, will help malls in the long run.

“I think they’re here to stay,” he said. “People have been predicting the death of the malls since catalogs and now it’s the Internet.”