Cohoes Commons: Cohoes, New York on DeadMalls.com

COHOES COMMONS: COHOES, NY

Pete Blackbird's Commentary:

This is barely a mall, but it is undoubtably dead. It's smaller stores are ALL gone, except for one antique store that's opened on like every other tuesday, if there's a blue moon, and the price is right is a re-run that day. There is a snack bar, but I think it operates on the same

schedule as the antique store. The escalator is always running, and there are cameras in the narrow hallways, which always makes me think of the Bill Murray movie Quick Change. (WHY ARE THEY

LOOKING AT ME!!!!) Anyhow, it's creepy and clausterphobic in there. I've been able to get into the place once, when the antique store was opened. When I came back with a camera, the doors were locked.

Cohoes, the store that was originally housed there (way back at the turn of the century) apparently decided that it wanted to have a mall of it's own. So they were the anchor, and they added onto thier very old store, circa 1992 to make the Commons part. I don't know how well the commons did, but they all look like they were once occupied, but I do know there is nothing there now.

I would suspect when Cohoes pulled thier store out of thier own mall, that might have signalled for the smaller stores to follow suit. (It seems pretty obvious to me). Anyhow, it's got a freshly paved parkinglot, and looks really spectacular from the outside (it's all brick), but good luck getting in. I would say it's not really worth making a trip from any distance, it's too small to be interesting, and the cameras are really creepy, even if no one is watching you on them.

Wendy Rigney’s Commentary:

User submitted in 2018

This is now a medical facility. Cohoes Family Care. The main Cohoes Clothing Store has long since been demolished and the newer former mall was converted. So at least it is still being used. It really had no chance as a mall. It was in the heart of the city with no real access from I-787. Add in that the outlet stores were high end (Ralph Lauren, David's Cookies as two examples) - while Cohoes is/was mainly working class - and the failure wrote itself. It only lasted a few years in the 'mid '80s, anyway.

Carl Johnson’s Commentary:

User submitted Mar 2007

Love your site. A couple of notes on Cohoes Commons: Cohoes had this big annual sale weekend, a massive sale on designer fashions that created a real feeding frenzy. People came by the busload to this thing. That and the "outlet mall" craze of the early '90s led them to think they could do the same thing. So when they built Cohoes Commons, there were a couple of other outlet stores there (I remember Ralph Lauren, don't know what else), but the place never did well because of its location and because it was a dumb idea. They were never going to convince those crowds from downstate to drive to Cohoes on a regular basis. So when they decided they needed a real revenue stream and moved into Crossgates, that was the end of the Cohoes location. Now the Cohoes store in Crossgates is just another Burlington Coat Factory, which bought them out.