Tanger Outlet to compete with Grove City mall

by Kim Leonard
PittsburghLive.com

Outlet shopping always has been an occasional treat for Betty Clutter.

"Whenever I'm on vacation I go to all the outlets wherever we are -- Lancaster or Florida or Myrtle Beach," -- the Washington. resident said. Now, with a major factory store center about to open a few miles from home, "I definitely will go there."

When it debuts Aug. 29, the Tanger Outlet Center near Washington will be the closest a factory outlet complex ever has come to the Pittsburgh area. Its location on a hillside overlooking The Meadows Racetrack and Casino is a 25-mile drive southwest from Downtown, compared with 55 miles north to the popular, and much bigger, Prime Outlets at Grove City.

The two centers will battle for customers starting with this year's back-to-school and holiday shopping seasons, though one retail expert said Tanger's newness and its proximity to the city, the flourishing Meadows slots parlor and the junction of Interstates 70 and 79 give it an edge.

"It will be the premium outlet center in the eastern Great Lakes and central mid-Atlantic states region," said well-known retail analyst Burt P. Flickinger III of the consulting firm Strategic Resource Group in New York.

Tanger "will pull people from Youngstown, given the slower pace of retail development in the Cleveland-Akron-Canton area, and it will pull people from other parts of Ohio and the southern tier of New York state," he predicted.

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