This NJ mall is a ’70s time capsule, and it’s still open

When I was a little kid, the mall didn’t have a roof.

Searstown in Egg Harbor Township opened in 1968 as an open-air shopping center, according to Wikipedia. It was like walking down a sidewalk with no street. Just shrubs, rocks and fountains. To a little kid getting his picture taken with Santa, it was pretty cool.

My parents picked up our back-to-school clothes at the back door of Sears, where the catalog department was.

By the time I was a teenager, the mall had a roof, and it had become my whole world. There was an iron-on T-shirt shop right in the middle. My first rock T-shirt came from there: Steve Miller Band, black, with that iridescent Pegasus logo.

Next door was Armand’s Sound Odyssey, where every single week I picked up a 45 or an album. Boston. Kansas. Chicago. America.

Across the hall was the Space Port. You felt like you were walking onto a spaceship. This was the Apollo era, after all.

And once I told my parents I would not be seen in Sears jeans, there was the Gap. They’d buy the Sears jeans. If I wanted Levi’s, I had to buy them myself.

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Those doors in the distance were once the main entrance to Searstown’s open-air mall in Egg Harbor Township, where a world of wonder waited. Today it’s Harbor Square. | Google Maps

Were they really the good old days?

Searstown became the Shore Mall, and a big chunk of it was torn down in 2013. What’s left is a much smaller shopping center called Harbor Square.

For years now, we’ve been hearing about dead malls. Many have met the wrecking ball or been turned into something else. “Abbott Elementary” even moved its school into an empty mall earlier this year.

So why do we look back and think those were the good old days?

I think it’s the sense of wonder. When you’re young, you experience everything for the first time, and that feeling sticks with you.

But we rarely appreciate things while we’re living them. We figure it out after they’re gone. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Somebody once said, “These are the good old days.” They were right, and we usually don’t believe it until later.

A mall that’s stuck in time, in a good way

That’s why Woodbridge Center caught my eye.

Islands.com calls it a nostalgic time capsule with wooden railings, a beige color scheme and few major updates since the turn of the century. Some people online compare it to the mall in the 1978 movie “Dawn of the Dead.”

And here’s what got me: when Woodbridge Center opened, it had a Space Port too. One Facebook user told Islands.com that the space-age entrance “made a shopping trip feel like a mission to another planet.”

The mall opened in 1971 at Routes 1 and 9 in Woodbridge. Today it has more than 150 stores, with Macy’s, Boscov’s, JCPenney and Dick’s Sporting Goods as anchors. There’s a carousel, a train ride, a Dave & Buster’s, glow-in-the-dark mini golf and a monthly toy show. There’s even a store called VHS that buys and sells vintage games, music and memorabilia.

I think I need to make a trip to Woodbridge Center. Not to relive the good old days, but to enjoy one while it’s still here.