Proposed PREIT-era Renovations - mid 2000s
In the mid 2000s, the Phillipsburg Mall was beginning to struggle. With the stock market crash, later recession, average income plummeting in Phillipsburg and nearby areas, and shift towards online marketplaces like Amazon, then mall owner PREIT saw many retailers leave the mall during that timeframe. However, PREIT also began to see the Phillipsburg Mall truly age into the basic 1980s mall many feared it would become. With the last major renovation occuring in 2003 - which included the addition of Kohl's as an anchor tenant, a shift of the color scheme going to blue and mauve, and the removal of fountains and other visual elements across the mall, it began to look like "one long hallway", as many referred to the mall during that time. To combat the terrible aging the mall was beginning to see, PREIT took this as an opportunity to search out for a firm specializing in retail spaces - CREATE Architecture (which at the time was about ten years removed from their last projec
