The Outlets at Bergen Town Center

The Outlets at Bergen Town Center is a shopping center located in Bergen County, New Jersey, USA. The center consists of both an indoor mall and exterior outlying stores and occupies over 105 acres split between the municipalities of Paramus and Maywood.The center, which was built as the Bergen Mall, opened in 1957 as one of several regional large-scale outdoor shopping centers rolled out nationwide, and was the largest of its kind at the time of its opening. It is the second-oldest mall in New Jersey. The mall offers a gross leasable area (GLA) of 917129sqft. The mall is located at the junction of Route 4 and Forest Avenue, and includes a separate shopping strip, south of Route 4 connected to the rest of the property via a pedestrian bridge. The mall has over the years included community spaces, including a chapel, theater for live dramas, post office, auditorium, ice rink, bowling alley and a children's amusement ride area, and is the current location of the Bergen County Museum. The Bergen Mall was designed by John Graham of New York City. The mall is subject to Bergen County's blue laws, which requires the mall to be closed on Sundays.HistoryThe mall was first planned in 1955 by Allied Stores to have 100 stores and 8,600 parking spaces in a 1.5 million ft2 mall that would include a 300000sqft Stern's store and two other 150000sqft department stores as part of the initial design. Allied's chairman B. Earl Puckett announced The Bergen Mall as the largest of ten proposed centers, stating that there were 25 cities that could support such centers and that no more than 50 malls of this type would be built nationwide. The mall opened on November 14, 1957 with great fanfare, as Dave Garroway, host of The Today Show served as master of ceremonies. Bergen Mall got its second anchor when a 135000sqft Ohrbach's location opened on August 17, 1967.