First Hartford Realty opened Methuen Mall on September 4, 1973, in Methuen, Massachusetts, on a 60-acre site, anchored initially by Howlands and Sears alongside 70 other retailers. Jordan Marsh replaced Howlands in 1977, and Filene’s Basement joined in the 1980s, but the property suffered a serious tenancy blow when both Sears and Filene’s Basement relocated to The Mall at Rockingham Park across the state line in Salem, New Hampshire.
Methuen Mall closed in 1997 and was demolished in early 1999, redeveloped shortly after into an open-air strip format renamed The Loop. At roughly 28,240 sqm, considerably smaller than the original 46,500 sqm enclosed mall, The Loop now carries around 25 to 30 stores anchored by The Home Depot, Marshalls and AMC Theatres, with GameStop and Old Navy among the smaller tenants.
Charter Realty & Development Corp. manages the property on behalf of an affiliate of First Hartford Realty Corporation, which our own store-presence data confirms still carries Bath & Body Works and Famous Footwear alongside the larger anchors.
That name change, from an enclosed “Mall” that lost its department-store anchors to a nearby New Hampshire competitor, to an open-air “Loop” strip format built on the same demolished footprint, reflects a common late-1990s New England pattern: enclosed malls losing their anchor tenants across a state line to a larger, newer competitor, then getting demolished and rebuilt as smaller, more cost-efficient open-air centers rather than attempting to recapture their original enclosed-mall scale.
