Mohawk Commons

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This site was a former Mohawk Mall. It was built in 1970, and demolished in 2000. Two years after the demolition in 2002, it opened as a big box center, known as Mohawk Commons. e.g. Target, and Lowes. By October 2005, it had 25 stores. The property before the demolition of the nearly-vacant Mohawk Mall, the center portion of the mall where Marshall's and Media Play was located, was owned by Wilmorite, and the rest of the mall remained like it was when it opened in 1970.
Demolition of the unoccupied portion of the mall was completed by Spring of 2001. The section of the mall that contained Rex TV, Media Play, and Marshall's remained standing while development of the outdoor strip mall began. The section of the old Mohawk Mall where Marshalls and Media Play were located was demolished in late 2002, to make room for Lowe's Home Improvement and Hardware store, which is also a big-box store.
Mohawk Mall was losing tenants one by one because fast-growing chain stores bypassed it for newly built state-of-the-art indoor shopping malls.
Big-box stores such as Wal-Mart attract shoppers that made Mohawk Mall unattractive, and causing it to suffer, resulting of its lost sales, and it became unprofitable.
When the newer state-of-the-art malls opened in the 1980s, they squeezed the remaining life out of Mohawk Mall, as shoppers flocked to these malls, making it unattractive to shoppers, and store owners. The construction of Mohawk Mall was cheap, before its demolition in 2000, it showed years of neglet, and its roof began to leak, it was under mismanagement. Mohawk Mall became an old underused indoor shopping mall, making it a indoor ghost town.
Before the old Mohawk Mall was constructed, the site was a golf course named Stanford.
The parking lot of the old Mohawk Mall had spaces for 4,000 cars.
When it opened in 1970, anchor stores were J.M. Fields (later became Bradlees), Flahs (later became Marshall's) Boston Store (later becane Addis and Deys department store, when that closed, it became Media Play) and Montgomery Ward. It had 80 stores. In its heyday, Mohawk Mall was like Rotterdam Square Mall, Wilton Mall, or Crossgates Mall of today. It was teeming with shoppers. When it opened in 1970, it was competing against downtown Schenectady businesses, putting them out of business, and later, downtown Schenectady became a ghost town.
When Rottedam Square Mall opened in 1988, it had a major impact on the mall. The competition from newer state-of-the-art indoor shopping malls such as Rotterdam Square, Crossgates, and Wilton helped to seal Mohawk Mall's fate.