Galleria at Pittsburgh Mills — Local services in Frazer Township

I first visited this mall with a group of high school friends in the summer of 2005 when it opened. There was a lot of excitement around the huge facility. On top of the shopping, there was a promise of a NASCAR go-kart track/entertainment facility that has yet to open 14 years later. At first the mall had little to no vacancies, boasted lots of trendy retailers, a food court full of options, plus at least three restaurants built into the mall itself. Even the Pittsburgh Steelers built an official team store in the mall that they have since abandoned.

After the initial buzz and novelty wore off, the mall started to lose tenants left and right until it ended up in the state that it is in today. Not only did online shopping hurt the mall, but it failed to lure regular shoppers from successful malls such as Ross Park, Robinson, and South Hills Village to travel all the way up Route 28 for stores that they could already find locally.

Currently, the main anchors at the Galleria at Pittsburgh Mills are a two level Macy’s, JC Penney, Dicks Sporting Goods, and a Cinemark Movie theater. A sushi bar and Panera Bread are the only restaurants left built into the actual mall.

Inside, there are mall standbys such as Bath and Body Works, Claire’s, American Eagle, Victoria’s Secret, Spencer’s, Hot Topic, Verizon and AT&T. The lone food court survivors are Villa Pizza and Charley’s Steak Sandwiches. A few independent stores such as a comic book shop, a glow in the dark mini golf course, a tuxedo rental place, a “dollar” store, and an unnamed shop that appears to sell nothing but salt lamps, fill storefronts that used to boast retailers such as H&M, Foot Locker, Forever 21, and Sears Grand. This place is so dead that Starbucks closed. Non-traditional businesses such as a few sports training facilities, a church, and a nursing school (formerly ITT Tech) take up some of the other vacancies, with lots of empty room still left to spare. Within the last few months in 2019, Petland and a Philip Peliusi hair salon have also closed.

The Galleria at Pittsburgh Mills is very clean, safe, and comfortable. Seriously, kudos to the maintenance crew because this place is always nice and clean. It’s a mall walkers dream and has become a destination for dead mall enthusiasts to marvel at the multi million dollar mistake in Frazer Township. I’m sure that mall management is doing its best to fill it up with what they can, but as a shopping destination, it’s just very poor at this point.

The Pittsburgh Mills exit off Route 28 isn’t a complete failure though. Many restaurants and businesses separate from the mall, known as The Village at Pittsburgh Mills, are worth visiting and are...

I think the owners should keep the mall there and what not, but it needs something. A main attraction. Most of the people here are complaining that all the stores are gone... Well it's not exactly the malls fault. If you want to blame somebody, blame the owners of the people that own the businesses that take stupid risks that are guaranteed to put them out of business. Sears Holdings/KMart is not going to be around much longer because they can't even payoff their debts. Even if they sold most or all of their properties, their debt to equity ratio shows that they can't even afford maintain their stores and afford up to date the and shopping at all their stores. Toy's R' Us is going out of business because they took out a leveraged buyout (without explaining what that is, I'll just say all businesses that made this move eventually went out of business) and the prices were cringe worthy and it's not as fun and exciting anymore for kid's. RadioShack just couldn't keep up and didn't really offer anything I couldn't get online, and JC Penny and Macy's could be going next which means if those anchor stores split, rent will go up and stores will/could either move or fold up shop all together. Fortunately, I have a solution! Maybe turn a section of the mall into a 8,500 seat state of the art arena and put a junior hockey team (they could play in the tier 1 USHL which could really be beneficial to our local college teams like PSU, RMU, IUP, Pitt, Pitt-Johnstown, Duquesne, and CalU) and it could possibly put Pitt's and Duquesne hockey programs on the map as they could share it and use it to play their home games, and Penn State New Kensington could play some of it's home basketball games there. Maybe an indoor lacrosse team, or even a G-League basketball team. The teams first name could be Allegheny Valley and the hockey team could be called the Riverrats or something. Keep the remaining stores for casual shoopers, make it more shopper friendly, and keep the rent for the stores at a decent prices, open the rink up for open skate and charge the general public a low price for a session and cheap skate rentals, (since the teams occupying the venue will already be paying to use the venue), and open free skate on occasion. Just a few suggestions to help boost the community and the local economy...

It's hard for me to really give this place a bad or good rating, what's more important would be your expectations coming here.

It's a mall gone horribly wrong in the death throes of a huge bankruptcy. The mall never really was ever totally full, but now there are entire stretches of emptiness.

And in many ways this is not a bad thing. If you're there for a specific place, for mall walking, or just getting the kids out of the house when it's rainy out this place can be great.

Half the food court is empty, but those that have survived so far there are good quality with solid staff. Only place we avoid like the plague is the Panera bread, famous in this specific location for their uncaring staff and horrible inaccurate service... 5 out of 5 visits were fail.

There's 2 indoor playgrounds for small and medium sized children, and a pay to play business with ball house and bouncy house types of options. The video arcade is small and not exciting but sufficient to keep the kids happy for a short burst of variety...

New dimension comics has a large store here and seems to have a steady and healthy gaming community, it really stands out as a success in the struggling mall.

An IMAX theater that is rarely crowded and does 5 dollar Tuesday movies with a great selection is a destination here by itself.

Beyond that there's some stock Staples still around, a kitchen store, Justice, Victoria's secret, clothing places, the occasional phone accessory and cell phone store... And an indoor themed miniature golf place...

If this place happens to have something you want or need, it's a low stress not crowded destination, but if you're looking for the packed bustle of a thriving mall, almost any mall in the Pittsburgh area has more standard mall faire than here, perhaps with the exception of the soon to be demolished...