Berkshire Mall

Berkshire Mall opened February 10, 1970, in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, a suburb west of Reading in Berks County, becoming the first enclosed shopping mall in eastern Pennsylvania outside the Philadelphia area. Developer Goodman Company built the property on former farmland that Textile Machine Works of Wyomissing had been consolidating since the 1930s through its Delta Realty Corporation subsidiary, with Sears announced as the first anchor tenant in November 1967 to replace its nearby Shillington location.

At roughly 910,000 sqft on a 59-acre site, the mall originally opened with three department-store anchors, Sears, Lit Brothers and John Wanamaker, alongside 76 inline stores including Woolworth and Waldenbooks. Boscov’s now anchors the property, which current owner Namdar Realty Group has continued to lease to a national tenant base including American Eagle, Buckle, Kay Jewelers, Zales and Foot Locker; a separate strip center on the same site, Berkshire Mall West, added in 1972, carries additional big-box tenants including Target and Best Buy.

Redevelopment plans have targeted the mall’s former Sears and Sears Auto space specifically: Motus Development, working adjacent to the main property, proposed a “Gateway at Berkshire” project in late 2023 with three pad sites and a two-level, roughly 124,000 sqft retail structure on that footprint. D&B Construction separately completed facade upgrades at the property’s TJ Maxx and Five Below units in 2024.

That 55-year run, from the first enclosed mall built outside Philadelphia to a property now navigating a Sears-space redevelopment more than five decades after that same retailer helped launch it, reflects how thoroughly Berkshire Mall has had to reinvent its anchor tenant strategy across multiple generations of American retail while remaining continuously operational throughout.