Financial Difficulties

Trial & Error

Terri Hill August 13, 2017

Although the mall’s visionaries were able to create something groundbreaking, Shoppers’ World still had its share of problems. After all, there was really no road map laying out how to construct and operate a successful mall. Predictably, some of the…
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While the Framingham shopping center now known as Shopper’s World could not look more commonplace — it is a carbon copy of thousands of similar retail centers across American suburbia —it is here that something groundbreaking in shopping history took place. This was the location of the old Shoppers’ World, the first mall east of the Mississippi and a trailblazer in shopping history. While the two shopping centers may share the same name (with a shifted apostrophe) they are light years apart in both look and atmosphere. And yet if the new Shopper’s World is where suburban shopping history has led, it’s a history that began with the original.