Galleria at White Plains

The Galleria at White Plains

The Galleria at White Plains
Location	White Plains, New York, U.S.
Opening date	1980
Developer	Cadillac Fairview
Management	Pacific Retail Capital Partners
Owner	Simon Property Group (50%) & Farallon Cap. Mgt. (50%)
No. of stores and services	130
No. of anchor tenants	3
No. of floors	4
Website	http://www.galleriaatwhiteplains.com

The Galleria at White Plains is a large enclosed shopping mall located in the downtown area of White Plains, New York, a commercial and residential suburb 20 miles (32 km) north of New York City.

Built in 1980 by Cadillac Fairview, a Canadian developer, the 900,000-square-foot (84,000 m²), four-level mall is located on two large city blocks of former urban renewal land. It opened in August 1980 and was the first of three Gallerias to open in the fall of 1980 around the nation, the others being Sherman Oaks and Fort Lauderdale. Its anchor stores are Macy's and Sears, which were relocated to the mall from nearby locations on Main Street to replace the original anchor stores. Abraham & Straus occupied the east anchor spot until converting to Sterns in 1995 and being replaced by Macy's a year later. The west anchor J.C. Penney closed on April 28, 2001 and was left vacant until September 2003 when Sears moved in. Martin Luther King Blvd. runs directly underneath the mall. The mall was constructed adjacent to a large two-block long parking garage which is connected directly to the mall at various levels. Shopping floors were color coded blue, green, yellow and red representing Street Level, Garden Level, location of the Garden food court, and Fashion Level 1 and 2 respectively. During the holiday season the mall's slogan was "We bring more good things to Christmas". The mall was renovated in the early 90's and only the glass elevator remains relatively unchanged. For example, the waterfall and stage in the center court was replaced with two miniature fountains situated between the escalators.

Similar to a sister project in nearby Stamford, Connecticut (the Stamford Town Center mall), the Galleria's architectural character appears fortress-like and overwhelms even the recent high density urban quality of its downtown environment. Considering the general architectural design of most enclosed shopping malls, it does not have much opportunity to create an interactive streetscape along its surrounding sidewalk areas. A late 1990s enhancement tried to correct some of these physical flaws, but recent retail tenant fit-outs on the sidewalk level have closed off much of this design effort.