Last week, I wrote about Liberty Village, an outdoor outlet center in Flemington, New Jersey. It’s considered to be the first outlet center in America, starting a trend that ended up outrunning it.

When it opened in 1981, and even when it expanded in the 1990s, it was bustling, cool, and somewhat original. Today, there are far larger outlet centers if you really want to go on a shopping spree, and of course there’s online shopping if you just want to do a little browsing, or buy one or two things. The whole faux-colonial-village thing is sort of obsolete now too, more kitschy than quaint. Here’s its version of the small-town clock and plaza:

My first post was mostly just photographs, from a recent visit to Flemington. Back when it was thriving, it would have been impossible to get photos of Liberty Village without people in them. On weekends, it was almost like a New York City sidewalk, jam-packed with people.

I can remember, back when I was seven or eight years old, seeing billboards for Liberty Village on the drive into Manhattan. People would come from New York, Connecticut, elsewhere in New Jersey, maybe Delaware too. They would stay overnight, and probably visit Flemington’s then-lively historic downtown. They might have dinner and drinks at the Union Hotel (which after a decade of neglect is finally undergoing a major rebuild.) That outlet center was the impetus for long-weekend trips. What a difference a couple of decades can make!

Now, the long-moribund outlet center is finally slated to be redeveloped into housing. Understandably, some people miss the outlets. But it’s unlikely that they could be brought back. Someone on Twitter pointed out to me, in a comment on my first Liberty Village post, that these kinds of medium-sized, somewhat old-fashioned retail establishments have gone bankrupt or lost tenants all up and down the east coast. (Their aging colonial theme was popular in the years following the Bicentennial.)

It would be nice if the site could simply be what it was in 1990. But urbanism, like politics, is the art of the possible. The choices that retail trends and property markets present today are an abandoned, decrepit outlet center, or new housing or mixed-use development. Saying no to that isn’t going to make any other options materialize.

In fact, Liberty Village happens to be an incredibly appropriate site for moderate-density housing. Take a look at the satellite map of Flemington, with Liberty Village towards the bottom-left corner.

Flemington’s actual downtown is a few blocks up. But Liberty Village is basically just as big. It fits into nearly four urban blocks, which could easily connect to the existing streets. (Turntable Junction, another ailing faux-historical outdoor shopping center just above, takes up another couple of would-be blocks.) These properties present the opportunity to create new development along the same pattern as what’s already there.

These shopping centers were fun in their day, and in many ways they worked in tandem with the town. But now they’re dead space. There are a handful of thriving businesses around these properties that are cut off from the rest of the town’s fabric. It was popular in those day to view traditional urban fabric as decrepit, expendable stuff. Now it’s prized. And Flemington has a chance to make it again.

The redevelopment plans, which at this point are not definite, also seem to allow for some businesses, even though the town isn’t billing it as mixed-use. As someone who loves Flemington, I love this, because it means more of Flemington.

For a lot of people, the outlets are part of Flemington’s identity. It’s hard to imagine the town when they’re gone. But they’re already gone, and the town can no longer rely on eager shoppers to keep the rest of its economic ecosystem afloat. To recapture that old vitality, it will need more people of its own: those who can remember a better past, and those who can see a place full of future life and opportunity.

Related Reading:

Inhabiting Old Ghosts

A Piece of New Jersey We’ll Never Build Again

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