North Franklin officials file hundreds of citations against Crown Center mall
N.Y. owner has potential buyer to purchase retail property
Mike Jones
For more than a year, North Franklin’s code enforcement officer has filed citations nearly every day against the owners of Washington Crown Center mall over unsafe conditions that township officials hope will spur the New York-based company to make immediate repairs or sell the property.
More than 700 citations have been filed since early last year that range from interior damage to problems with the exterior walls to leaking roofs as the structure has become more dilapidated over the past decade and tenants have fled the mall.
“We’re continuing to cite the mall trying to force his hand to sell the place,” North Franklin Supervisors Chairman Bob Sabot said. “We’re doing everything and anything in the powers of this municipality to get him to sell.”
Sabot said the former Bon-Ton department store is in particularly poor condition due to a leaking roof and the movie theater that closed during the COVID-19 pandemic has been vandalized.
“The only way to get these citations to stop is to fix the mall or sell it,” Sabot said. “He doesn’t seem to be in the mood to fix it.”
A hearing was scheduled for Wednesday morning before District Judge Michael Manfredi for more than 321 citations filed since late January, but township officials asked for it be delayed as the property owner apparently has a buyer interested in purchasing the mall. North Franklin solicitor Michael Cruny and code enforcement officer Jarrod D’Amico of Harshman CE Group attended the hearing, but no representatives for owner Kohan Retail Investment Group were in attendance.
Kohan, which purchased the mall at 1500 W. Chestnut St. for $20 million in 2016, listed it for sale last July. The mall has steadily deteriorated and lost tenants since the company took ownership of it, and is now down to only about 20 businesses with many storefronts sealed off from the public. When a reporter walked through the mall Wednesday afternoon, ceiling panels were missing in some areas due to leaking pipes and garbage cans were placed in various areas to catch rainwater falling through the roof.
But it appears the flood of citations might be working because township officials said they have heard a deal to sell could be imminent. A man who answered the phone at Kohan’s headquarters in Great Neck, N.Y., told a reporter Wednesday morning to call back later, but no one could be reached for comment to discuss the citations and potential sale.
Cruny said they are going to take a six-month pause to see if the potential buyer will follow through on the purchase, which could mean the township would withdraw the citations in order to give the new owner a clean slate to make repairs.
“There are a lot of moving parts with outstanding citations, past judgments that need to be cleared up and potential new buyers,” Cruny said. “It’s kind of a balancing act in the sense the township’s goal is not to be punitive. They want the work to get done.”
He estimates there are more than $37,000 worth of recent judgments against the mall, along with another $27,000 from early last year, when the township was in District Judge Kelly Stewart’s jurisdiction. He said those judgments could be waived as part of a “good-faith effort to work on the property” rather than let it continue to deteriorate.
“That money might be better spent paving the parking lot, fixing the roof, keeping the water on,” Cruny said of the owners improving the property. “There needs to be new blood here and the ability for someone to rehab this.”
Township officials took the owners to court last year in an attempt to recoup $15,000 in damages and repairs due to a water main break that occurred in April 2024 that forced the mall to be closed for three days.
Sabot said the mall has a lot of potential with strong anchor tenants such as MAC Bids, Ollie’s, Marshall’s and Rural King, but there needs to be new ownership so the township isn’t left with an eyesore.
“He’s let that mall go into total and complete ruin,” Sabot said. “But the structure of the mall is good and any potential interested buyer should know the structure is solid. We have a good structure, but there is a lot that has to be done.”
The mall, which opened in 1969 as Franklin Mall, has 434,408 square feet of space. It was renamed Washington Crown Center in 1999 and underwent a renovation, including adding a movie theater.