Stand at the corner of Knights Road and Franklin Mills Circle on a July evening and you can watch two versions of Parkwood at once. On one side, the sprawling outlet mall most of the neighborhood grew up calling Franklin Mills is quieter than it has been in decades. On the other side, the residential grid behind Academy Road is doing what it has always done: kids on the Fitzpatrick Playground bridge, a line at the Philly Pretzel Factory, someone walking a dog toward the Poquessing.
This summer is the hinge. The mall you know is being taken apart on paper before it is taken apart in concrete, and the parts of Parkwood that will still be here on the other side are worth paying attention to now, while the corner is still recognizable.
The mall you live next to is already a different mall
The property has been rebranded twice in a decade. Simon Property Group renamed the mall from Franklin Mills to Philadelphia Mills in September 2014, alongside a renovation intended to push it upmarket. That plan did not hold, and the center is now marketed as Franklin Mall. As of May 2026, it is 38% vacant.
The last eighteen months of departures read like a timeline anyone who shopped there has already lived through:
- AMC Philadelphia Mills 14 permanently closed in January 2025 when its lease expired, redirecting moviegoers to AMC Neshaminy 24.
- Forever 21 vacated in February 2025 as part of its nationwide closures after filing for Chapter 11.
- Saks Off 5th closed two Philadelphia stores in November 2025, one of them at the mall.
- Burlington closed permanently on February 20, 2026.
- A fire the next day, February 21, briefly shut the entire mall as an "unsafe structure"; it reopened on February 27, 2026 after safety inspections.
Then came the sale. On April 9, 2026, Franklin Mall was sold to Dean Adler of Lubert-Adler Partners, who plans to replace the struggling center with a mixed-use development featuring a large indoor/outdoor sports complex and 250 units of workforce housing. A 150-room Homewood Suites by Hilton with new restaurants is part of the plan, along with a Margaritaville-themed water park. Adler has said he wants to repurpose as much existing space as possible, and on April 16 estimated the redevelopment at roughly $100 million.
For a resident, the practical read is this. A 1.6 million-square-foot regional shopping destination is not becoming a regional shopping destination anymore. It is becoming a hotel, a water park, apartments, and a sports complex. The gravity of the block is shifting from "drive here to shop" to "live and stay and play here." Traffic patterns on Woodhaven and Knights Road are going to change. So is what "walking to the mall" means, because the mall as a walkable destination is going to be a smaller share of the site than it used to be.
Nothing about that timeline is bad news for the residential side of Parkwood. It is a reason to notice that the residential side has been doing the heavy lifting for a while.
The half-mile inside the neighborhood is still the anchor
The Parkwood Shopping Center at Academy and Byberry was added in the 1960s and is still owned by Korman, the same family company that built the houses around it. That continuity matters. Parkwood residents can walk to the neighborhood shopping center to eat lunch at Reen's Delicatessen or grab a snack at the Philly Pretzel Factory, and both places have outlasted every rebrand happening down at Franklin Mills Circle. Pat's Pizza belongs in the same category. Businesses like Reen's Deli and Pat's Pizza are closely connected with the community they serve, which is a longer way of saying they are the reason people say hello to each other in line.
Two other things are worth noticing on the walk-to side this summer:
Fitzpatrick Playground. The park now has a new water feature and a mini suspension bridge, which changes the calculus for anyone deciding between packing the car for the shore or just walking three blocks. On an 88-degree Saturday, three blocks wins.
Junod Recreation Center and the Parkwood Youth Organization. Junod carries athletic facilities and the Parkwood Youth Organization runs community sports programs, which is where a lot of summer weekday evenings actually happen for families here. Not glamorous. Reliable. That is the point.
Stephen Decatur School. Worth knowing even if your kids are grown or not yet school-age: the combined elementary and middle school works with Vetri Community Partnership to teach students about nutrition through cooking classes. It is the kind of program that ends up on a block's group chat when a new family moves in and asks what to expect.
The connective tissue between all of these is the sidewalk, which is a bigger deal than it sounds. Densities in the Far Northeast reward neighborhoods where you can leave the car in the driveway for an entire Saturday, and Parkwood is one of the few that consistently does.
Benjamin Rush is the sleeper summer play
If you have lived in Parkwood for years and never actually walked into Benjamin Rush State Park, this is the summer to fix that. It sits at the northern edge of the neighborhood at Southampton Road and Roosevelt Boulevard, and it is genuinely unusual: a 275-acre urban oasis and the only state park within Philadelphia city limits, carved from the grounds of the former Byberry State Hospital, featuring one of the region's largest community gardens, open meadows, Poquessing Creek woodlands, multi-use trails, and a radio-controlled airplane flying area.
A few specifics that a Parkwood resident should actually know:
| Feature | Detail |
|---|---|
| Hours | Open every day, 8:00 a.m. to sunset |
| Facilities | No reservable facilities; carry-in, carry-out trash |
| Community garden fee | A one-time $30 membership plus $35 per plot |
| Garden footprint | Roughly 11 acres of plots |
| Address | 15001 Roosevelt Boulevard |
Two things are underrated here. The first is the community garden itself. The Benjamin Rush Community Garden is believed to be one of the largest in the world, and plots draw gardeners from across Philadelphia, Bucks County, Montgomery County, and New Jersey, with everyone who leases a plot contributing volunteer hours toward the whole space. For $65 in a first season, a Parkwood household can be part of that. The waiting logic is straightforward: the closer you live, the less friction there is to actually show up on a Tuesday evening to water tomatoes.
The second is the birding. The meadow-to-woodland transition along Poquessing Creek pulls excellent migratory diversity, which is a nicer way of saying the park does more work than most people give it credit for on a quiet morning. The RC airplane field, run by the Northeast Radio Controlled Airplane Club, is its own summer entertainment. Bring a folding chair.
Add the Poquessing Creek Trail, which threads out of the neighborhood proper, and you have a warm-weather routine that does not require a car or a mall.
What the shift actually means for a Saturday
Put the two sides of the corner together and the picture clarifies. The mall is transitioning from a destination you drove into on Saturday afternoon to a construction site that will eventually reopen as something else entirely, with people living inside it. The Parkwood Shopping Center, the rec centers, the state park at the north edge, and the sidewalks that connect them are not changing. They are just becoming a larger share of what "being in Parkwood" means.
Locals know Parkwood as "the holiday neighborhood," and, according to Bill Callahan of TheNorthEastLife.com, many residential blocks coordinate themes and decorate their homes together. That habit of blocks doing things together is the same habit that keeps a neighborhood durable when the biggest commercial neighbor across the boulevard gets demolished and rebuilt. The Fourth of July decorations will go up on the same porches whether the Margaritaville water park breaks ground in 2026 or 2028.
For a homeowner, the useful posture this summer is curiosity, not anxiety. Walk the perimeter of the mall property once so you have your own before-picture. Get a plot at Benjamin Rush if you have ever thought about it. Take out-of-town guests to Reen's instead of a chain. When the redevelopment starts producing renderings and permit filings, you will read them with a clearer sense of what is actually being replaced and what is not.
If you are thinking about your own place in all of this, whether that is understanding what nearby redevelopment tends to do to values on a street like yours, or just wanting a straight answer about what a Parkwood row home is worth right now, Hernan Alvarado Jr is happy to have that conversation. Let's Connect.
