Buffalo-based developer Myron Hunt opened Clifton Country Mall in 1976 on former farmland along Route 146 in Clifton Park, New York, a project that helped transform the area from rural land into a suburban commercial corridor alongside the newly built Interstate 87. Original anchors were Caldor, JCPenney, Marshalls and Steinbach; a 1984 expansion added a food court and movie theater.
The mall struggled through the late 1990s after nearby Crossgates Mall opened in Guilderland in 1984 and progressively drew away tenants, eventually landing on “Dead Malls of America” lists as Caldor and Steinbach both closed by 2000. DCG Development bought the property in 2006, renamed it Clifton Park Center, and began “demalling” it: cutting JCPenney and the former Steinbach wing off from the enclosed portion and converting them into open-air lifestyle center space, while retaining an enclosed core around the food court, Marshalls and Boscov’s (which had replaced Caldor in 2001).
At roughly 630,000 sqft across more than 50 acres, the property added a five-story Hilton Garden Inn and a 10-screen Regal Cinema in 2011, replacing the mall’s original movie theater. CPC Development I LLC, led by principal Faraz Khan, bought the property from DCG Development in 2023 for $55 million; at the time of that sale, the center carried a 96 percent occupancy rate, with Chick-fil-A and Bass Pro Shops announced as forthcoming additions to the property’s outskirts. Bass Pro Shops has since opened, on July 30, 2025, a 70,000 sqft store at 400 Clifton Park Center Road on the site of the former Northstar Chevrolet dealership, adjacent to but a separate parcel from the enclosed mall itself.
That hybrid enclosed-mall-to-lifestyle-center transformation, driven directly by a newer regional competitor pulling away tenants two decades earlier, reflects how thoroughly 1970s-era enclosed malls in secondary metro markets have had to physically reconfigure, sometimes repeatedly, to remain commercially viable against larger, newer regional rivals built in the same broader market.
