Shops at West Seneca, formerly Seneca Mall was a one-level shopping mall 9.2 miles (14.9 km) northwest of downtown Buffalo, New York, between Orchard Park Road, Ridge Road and Interstate 90 in West Seneca, a suburb of Buffalo. The mall had three anchor stores which once housed JCPenney, Sattler's and Sibley's.
Mall History[]
The mall opened in 1969 and served the West Seneca and Orchard Park suburbs of Buffalo. The mall was doing well throughout the 70's and early 80's but by the late 1980's, the mall started to decline. Sattler's closed down in 1982 and was never occupied after that. In 1985, McKinley Mall in Hamburg opened less than 2 miles away, as expected, some stores moved to the new mall but the last two anchors stayed. The final blow for the mall came in 1989 when Walden Galleria in Cheektowaga opened just about 5 miles away. First, Sibley's closed, then finally JCPenney closed and smaller stores left the mall at an alarming fury. The mall went from healthy to dead in less than two years. In 1994, Seneca Mall permanently closed and sat vacant up until 1997 when the Seneca Mall was demolished and a new power center was built on the land. Shops at West Seneca opened in 1999 with tenants such as Kmart and Tops Friendly Markets. Other plans included a Sony 24 screen movie theater which never materialized. The Home Depot, Walmart and Lowe's were also planned but they never materialized either. Piles of rubble and dirt still remain from the Seneca Mall demolition which are in a fenced in area near the outlot bank, which is the only part of the original mall that exists. Shops at West Seneca was deemed a failure as only 2 stores opening at the shopping complex instead of more that were planned. Kmart later closed in 2019 and was demolished the same year, leaving the only tenant Tops Friendly Markets at the Shops at West Seneca.