Lehigh Valley Mall, Promenade Saucon Valley celebrating anniversaries

Perhaps by sheer coincidence, October will be a special month of anniversaries for both the Lehigh Valley Mall and Promenade Saucon Valley.

This month marks the 50th anniversary for the Lehigh Valley Mall in Whitehall Township, which opened Oct. 6, 1976, and the 20th anniversary for the Promenade in Upper Saucon Township, which opened Oct. 27, 2006.

Both centers are celebrating their milestone anniversaries amid a changing retail climate — one that experts said both have proven well equipped to handle.

‘Like going to Disneyland’

The 1.19 million-square-foot Lehigh Valley Mall is owned by Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust and Simon Property Group. A 1990 Morning Call article reported that the mall was observed to have driven the “cascading development” along MacArthur Road, which township officials called the “The Golden Strip of the Lehigh Valley.”

Tony Iannelli, president and CEO of the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce, said there was big change in the region when first the Whitehall Mall opened in 1966, followed by the Lehigh Valley Mall.

“Hamilton Street was the shopping center, if you will, for Allentown … and it had the flagship store of Hess’s,” he said. “So then along came the malls, and at that point, the political leadership decided to put up canopies and changed the name. Instead of Hamilton Street … it became the Hamilton Mall, covered by canopies with two lanes of traffic. And in fact, [what] they were trying to do is, they saw the writing on the wall, and that was that a lot of the shopping was moving away from the downtowns not just in Allentown but across the nation.”

The Lehigh Valley Mall, originally opened in October 1976, is shown Friday, Sept. 25, 2026, in Whitehall Township. The mall is celebrating its 50th anniversary this October. (Scott M. Nagy/Special to The Morning Call)

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Indeed, going to the mall “is like going to Disneyland for kids like me that grew up in Newport Avenue in Northampton,” said Whitehall Mayor Joseph Marx, who was 9 years old when the Lehigh Valley Mall opened.

The mayor said that retail is the “bread and butter” for Whitehall Township, which he called a shopping district that the Lehigh Valley Mall anchors. Without the mall and retail, he said, taxpayers would have to make up the loss such as through property taxes.

“[The mall] draws a lot of people regionally and it gets people into the township, and then they go to other businesses, restaurants, whatever it may be,” Marx said. “So it’s very important and … it’s one of those things [where] once you lose it, it’s never coming back.”

Among the first tenants at the Lehigh Valley Mall was the German-American restaurant Dunderbak’s, which opened in 1977 under Bill Baker and his wife Katy.

Bill Baker called operating at the mall “quite an adventure” through the years, which included hardships such as the recession in the mid-2000s and when the mall closed for three months in 2020 during to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“They were tough years but we’re still here, and getting to the point now we’ll both be 80 soon, that we’re looking forward to hopefully being able to retire,” he said. The couple is looking to sell the restaurant.

Baker said it’s “fantastic” to see the mall reach its 50th anniversary in a tough retail climate. He said about two years ago, there was a sense that the mall was recovering from the pandemic, and today there seems to be a resurgence.

“Our sales were up last year and up this year, and I attribute it to … people just, I think, want to get back out and see people,” he said. “Want to get back out and look at products and touch products. And the need for socialization, but that’s just my opinion.”

A spokesperson for the Lehigh Valley Mall declined to comment for this story.

Lehigh Valley’s first lifestyle center

Twenty years after the mall, Promenade Saucon Valley opened as The Promenade Shops at Saucon Valley with over 70 retailers and restaurants across 475,000 square feet and costing $125 million to build. PGIM Inc. owns the property.

“Celebrating 20 years is an exciting milestone for Promenade Saucon Valley and an opportunity to recognize the incredible community that has supported us since we opened in 2006,” the shopping center said in a statement. “As the Lehigh Valley has grown and evolved, so has the Promenade, and we’re proud to continue bringing new shopping, dining and experiences to our guests. We’re excited to celebrate this anniversary while looking ahead to the next chapter for the property.”

The Promenade was the Lehigh Valley’s first lifestyle center, “an open-air mall featuring extensive landscaping, a Main Street design ambience and upscale stores of the sort not previously seen in the Valley,” according to a Morning Call report.

Such a design was a good fit for a growing, affluent region, said Roland J. Kushner, professor emeritus of business at Muhlenberg College.

“The population center of the Lehigh Valley was shifting west and south toward there,” Kushner said. “Lower Macungie, Upper Saucon — some of those regions were getting crowded more quickly and with higher-end houses.“

Upper Saucon Township Manager Tom Beil said in an email that the Promenade is the township’s largest real estate taxpayer, generating about $1.1 million annually in real estate tax revenue for the Southern Lehigh School District and about $100,000 annually for Upper Saucon Township.

He praised the shopping center as a welcoming and safe environment that contributes to community’s quality of life and hosts events such as Christmas tree lightings.

“In short, Promenade Saucon Valley is more than a commercial development,” Beil said. “It is an important economic and community asset that generates substantial tax revenue, provides a high-quality gathering place for residents, and contributes to the overall vitality of Upper Saucon Township.”

People shop Friday, Sept. 25, 2026, at Promenade Saucon Valley in Upper Saucon Township. Both the Promenade and the Lehigh Valley Mall celebrate anniversaries in October: 50 years for the the Lehigh Valley Mall in Whitehall Township and 20 years for Promenade Saucon Valley. (April Gamiz/The Morning Call)

Promenade Saucon Valley is seen Friday, Sept. 25, 2026, in Upper Saucon Township. Both the Promenade and the Lehigh Valley Mall celebrate anniversaries in October: 50 years for the the Lehigh Valley Mall in Whitehall Township and 20 years for Promenade Saucon Valley. (April Gamiz/The Morning Call)

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Tara Druckenmiller, who has worked at the Promenade for most of the time since it opened and is the second assistant manager for Yankee Candle, said she has enjoyed working there for the comradery among tenants and how safe it has felt there.

“It’s kind of unbelievable,” Druckenmiller said of the 20th anniversary, noting how her son went off to kindergarten when the center opened and now he has kids of his own.

Another original tenant is the restaurant Melt, owned by Paxos Restaurants.

Corporate Executive Chef Christopher Heath worked as Melt’s head chef when it first opened, and considered Melt as one of the Promenade’s anchor tenants.

“It’s been an incredible relationship with the Promenade,” Heath said, highlighting the loyal guests and staff the restaurant has.

The Promenade is recognizing the anniversary with special offers, promotions and giveaways through Oct. 20, and events such as a ceremony during the fourth annual Barktoberfest at 2 p.m. Oct. 17.
What the shopping centers mean today

The retail climate today heavily differs from when the Lehigh Valley Mall and the Promenade opened, and COVID-19 shutdowns only accelerated the trend of shoppers shifting to online. On the brick-and-mortar side, strip malls with just a handful of tenants are providing competition, and even downtowns like Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton are making a comeback.

“Competition is fierce,” Iannelli said.

Yet experts believe the Lehigh Valley Mall and Promenade still have a future and role in the community.

In a statement, Stephanie Cegielski, vice president of public relations and industry education for shopping center industry group ICSC, said shopping centers still act as places for people to come together, even if how they fulfill that role has changed.

She noted a 2023 report on Gen Z shoppers found that 3 in 5 visit malls to socialize even if they don’t need to purchase anything; 3 in 5 would rather spend money on experiences over material goods; and 7 in 10 believe that retail centers and stores have done well designing experiences that offer fun places for people to enjoy together.

“The most successful shopping centers are those that have a clear understanding of their role within the communities they serve and continue to adapt their tenant mix to reflect how consumers live today,” Cegielski said. “That may mean moving beyond a traditional retail-only model and creating destinations that integrate shopping with dining, entertainment, wellness, healthcare, and other services that generate repeat visits. Consumers are looking for places that help them accomplish multiple tasks in a single trip while also providing enjoyable experiences.”

Rebecca Jen-Hui Wang, an associate professor of marketing at Lehigh University, explained what helps distinguish the two shopping centers.

For the mall, she said, that includes a strong location, the sheer size and 50 years of repeated consumer habits.

“It started with a strong location, which made it convenient for people from across the Valley and helped it attract a large collection of retailers from the very beginning,” Wang said in an email. “That size then became self-reinforcing: If consumers could run many different errands, shop across multiple brands, and combine the trip with nearby destinations such as Walmart and other shopping centers, the area could quickly become part of their everyday routines. Over decades, that creates familiarity and habit.”

Wang called the Promenade the “polar opposite” as an outdoor lifestyle center that leaned toward aspirational brands and more unique experiences.

“Its outdoor space, restaurants, entertainment, and retail mix make it feel less like a place to complete routine errands and more like a destination for spending time,” she said. “In that sense, Promenade functions more like a weekend outing during which consumers can shop, eat, see a movie, and stroll around, rather than a conventional mall built primarily around shopping efficiency.”

Denise Ogden, professor of marketing for Penn State Lehigh Valley and a member of the board of directors for the Council for Retail and Sales at DeSales University, said both a mall and a lifestyle center need to adapt and motivate people to visit in a way that online shopping can’t, becoming mixed-use community spaces with events, opportunities for socialization, and tenant types beyond shopping and food.

“It has to be what we call ‘experiential retailing,’ ” Ogden said. “That while they’re there, they’re creating memories. They’re gaining experiences that they couldn’t get anywhere else.”

Examples include the opening of Good Shepherd Rehabilitation at the Promenade, events like the Christmas tree lightings and Barktoberfest at the Promenade, and the play areas at the mall.

“These centers are very creative in the way that they attract people and have events that will get people to come to socialize,” Ogden said. “And while they’re there, ‘Let’s go to Batch [Microcreamery] and have some ice cream’ or ‘Hey, I didn’t even realize they had an L.L.Bean here’ — that type of thing. You have to attract people with community-style events, with creativity, and then while they’re there, they will eat, they will shop.”

Ogden also believes the mall and Promenade need to leverage technology to succeed and create a seamless experience for customers. That includes online shopping, which both shopping centers provide for, but she also pointed out a lot of retailers use artificial intelligence.

Perhaps one day, she speculated, AI can scan customers’ faces to send them personalized shopping recommendations.

“You always have to think of putting the consumer at the center of these decisions,” she said. “Will technology help improve the shopping experience? Will it save time? Or will it save them money or will it delight them or wow them in some way? And I think that is where those technology decisions have to be made … not just using technology because you can, but focusing on the consumer and how do we improve their experience.”

Similarly, Lehigh University marketing professor Beibei Dong said a successful shopping center will use alternatives like online shopping, rather than compete against them.

She referred to this as omnichannel marketing, which reaches customers through multiple touchpoints that supplement each other. An example would be when social media inspires a customer to check out a website, visit a store in person and then order a product through a mobile app.

“In that sense, it’s not the company [deciding] which channel I’m going to use to sell to one group of customers,” Dong said. “It’s one customer, through one transaction, interacting with companies at many different touchpoints.”

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