Fashion District Philadelphia - Philadelphia (PA)

4 /5 Jungwook Peter Choi: As always, downtown Philadelphia is super busy with heavy traffic. The area around this mall is no exception—it’s congested. It’s convenient that the public parking garage is right next to the mall, but the parking fee seems quite expensive. It’s $16 for one hour, and even just three hours costs over $30! However, the connection between the garage and the mall makes getting around easy. The malls interior is much better than I expected—its spacious, clean, and has a great variety of stores. With lots of restaurants in the basement and a theater/arcade upstairs, it seems like a great place to spend some quality time.

5 /5 Lisa Jones: This place was was clean and well lit. I stopped at Tiffanys & Dunkin and hung out for a while to get the vibe of the mall and it was relaxed. The only issue I had was a few of the charging ports did not work other then that it was great. Its not like the old gallery where it had a lot going on and lots of people, it was actually pretty quiet for the most part besides the music playing and a few people walking through every now and then.

4 /5 Jason Keller: Connected to the SEPTA Jefferson Station and the Market-Frankford Line station for 11th Street that will take you further into Center City to many of the historic attractions in Philly. This shopping center offers something for everybody. Simply coming out of the station, I was greeted simply with an overwhelming amount of stores. From the moment you will walk out, you will find a Philly Pretzel Factory and a Cinnabon oriented at the front, further down the hall, you can find a Starbucks, in addition to a diversity of usual stores for a mall on the first and second floors, which I had the glory of touring during my break between trains. Additionally, this mall thrives in becoming a third space for other purposes besides shopping. The mall has an AMC theater that is a dine-in location, and a Round1 Entertainment Center oriented in the footnote of a former department store (Strawbridges?) that enhances the malls appeal. Despite these praises, the mall has one major gripe. With that being the presence of dead stretches. While the city has been looking for the past 3 years to demolish parts of the Fashion District for a new arena for the 76ers and Flyers, Many of these dead stretches should be repurposed for community use, or used by the city for government offices, considering the proposal fell through. Still, these gripes aside, the mall is still one of the best in city malls I have seen in a hot minute, definitely a visit back will be needed to explore more.