Historic Western New York Mall Shuts Its Doors For The Last Time

What was once a huge hub for family, friends, and businesses to connect in ways that shaped the northtowns of Western New York for generations is now just a memory. After years of being just a shell, with just a few remaining stores that were largely lonely and empty, now the once great Boulevard Mall has finally shut its exterior doors for the final time, and people no longer can walk its halls, eat inside its food court, and frequent its retail shops.

Officially opening in 1962, the 904,000 square foot shopping center sat on a sprawling campus along Niagara Falls Boulevard on the border between the Towns of Amherst and Tonawanda, just north of Buffalo. For more than 60 years, people wandered its halls to eat, hang, and shop.

Like most malls in the United States, the rise of online shopping and the inability to recover from the change in people's shopping patterns led the Boulevard to lock its exterior doors this past week.

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Now, after a series of financial and ownership moves between the Town of Amherst, Douglas Jemal's Douglass Development, and Randy Benderson's Benderson Development, the mall and its massive 60+ acre site are now ready to be demolished and redeveloped into the planned Boulevard Place, a mixed-used, multi-purpose site that will have a community center, housing, and retail shops in West Amherst.

According to Buffalo Business First, the new town center will serve as a new community and hub for neighborhood activity to help support all of the other businesses that surround the western Amherst/eastern Tonawanda areas.

Within the next few years, Niagara Falls Boulevard between Maple Road and Sheridan Drive should look a whole lot different.