While the recent opening of the Happy Valley Casino has brought new life to a former Nittany Mall anchor spot, much of the College Township shopping center continues to languish in a years-long decline.
A Centre County developer has a vision to change that.
State College-based PrimeCore is hoping to acquire and revitalize the 58-year-old mall — and with the support of local government and business officials, the developer is actively seeking state redevelopment financing to make the project happen.
The company has had the mall under contract for two years, meaning a deal is in place to purchase it from current owner Namdar Realty Group, if the right financing can be secured, PrimeCore CEO Ara Kervandjian told StateCollege.com during a recent conversation at his Ferguson Township offices.
Kervandjian foresees the property as a modern community destination, populated by a diverse array of restaurants, shops and entertainment in what is considered one of the county’s prime growth areas.
“The plan for us is to redevelop it into a vibrant, family-type entertainment facility,” Kervandjian said.
“It’s a Thursday night. Let’s get out and go play some video games, have dinner in that steakhouse, have that ice cream or go to that taco place — just have a reason to get up and go. We’ve got some good restaurants around here, but the repetition is what I’m trying to break through.”
PrimeCore would acquire about 330,000-square feet of property on roughy 35 acres. That excludes portions that are generally considered part of “the mall” but are actually separately-owned parcels: Rural King, Steve Shannon Tire and Auto, McDonald’s and Happy Valley Casino, the latter of which Kervandjian has a stake in as a member of SC Gaming, the Ira Lubert-led investor group involved in the casino’s business operations.
Kervandjian said the project would potentially involve a combination of redeveloping the existing mall structure and razing a portion for new construction. Buildings for businesses outside the main mall could also be constructed on pad sites.
“Certain tenants have existing leases there; they’re long term leases,” he said. “I don’t know what the future is of those. We would approach them to see what their plans are. If there are sections of the mall that are more apt to be razed and converted, we would do that. Obviously, pad building sites, it’s independent in the parking areas; we could do that. And we have to do it in cooperation with the other parcel owners.”
Kervandjian envisions “revamping the mall and turning it inside-out, possibly with the restaurants facing outdoors.” Outparcels, meanwhile, could have fast-casual restaurants, coffee shops, or potentially even mixed-use, with ground-floor commercial and workforce housing on the upper levels.
“If there’s an opportunity to have some freestanding buildings, they may have commercial underneath and two or three stories of workforce housing,” he said. “And we’re very happy to take a look at that opportunity… We would look for building some apartment buildings that are for the workforce, those that are working in the in the casino itself or any other businesses that we’re going to have. If if we can, we’ll be happy to see that works.”
A prolific commercial and residential developer in Centre County and elsewhere, Kervandjian has developed or co-developed projects such as Patton Crossing, mixed-use student apartment buildings The Metropolitan and Pugh Centre and at least a half-dozen affordable housing complexes containing hundreds of units over the past 15 years, to name a few. He and PrimeCore are also behind the planned redevelopment of the Arnold Addison Court senior low-income housing apartments in State College, which would be razed and replaced by a student apartment building that mirrors Pugh Centre.
The Nittany Mall would not be his first mall reclamation project. Kervandjian is one of the leaders of Famvest Partners, which in 2023 acquired the former Lycoming Mall near Williamsport and embarked on a plan to create The District at Lycoming Valley, a mixed-use redevelopment to “transform the underutilized site into a modern destination featuring retail, hospitality, dining, and entertainment,” according to its website.
In 2025, Famvest secured Bass Pro Shops as an anchor business for the District at Lycoming Valley and it is expected to open in 2027 on the site of a former Best Buy. Since then, Wawa and a Hilton-brand hotel have also been announced for the first phase of redevelopment, and the developers are continuing to negotiate with more businesses for the property. A movie theater there also reopened under a new name and ownership in 2024.
The former Lycoming Valley Mall is a much larger property than what PrimeCore would have to work with at the Nittany Mall — more than three times the size, in fact.
But the ethos of creating a revitalized hub for entertainment, dining and shopping from a declining, underutilized site is the same.
Famvest also received about $5.5 million in state funding toward the Lycoming Mall project, and Kervandjian said financial support from the commonwealth, largely in the form of a favorable loan under a commercial redevelopment program, will be critical to making the Nittany Mall project happen.
“Conventional financing to buy the mall is difficult, because you have to acquire it, make improvements to it, reposition it —all of those things,” Kervandjian said. “So we need some favorable financing terms with the intention of paying back the commonwealth once we had the engine running again.”
Greg Scott, president and CEO of the Chamber of Business and Industry of Centre County, which has thrown its support behind the plan, agreed that traditional financing for it would be “very difficult.”
“It’s the type of project that’s hard for a developer to pencil out on his own,” Scott said. “It’s a project that really needs some support from the state to make it happen, and I think it’s a really good project for that.”
Local Officials Back Effort for State Support
PrimeCore began seeking state assistance for the project in 2024 through the Pennsylvania Strategic Investments to Enhance Sites Program, or PA SITES. According to the Department of Community and Economic Development, the program is designed “to provide grant and loan funding to eligible applicants to develop competitive sites for businesses to relocate or expand within the Commonwealth.”
DCED officials visited the mall in 2025 for a tour and to see how Kervandjian’s vision could play out, but ultimately determined the project did not fit the program’s criteria.
Now PrimeCore is in the midst of pursuing a different DCED grant/loan program: Business in Our Sites, which is intended for commercial development of previously used, underutilized or undeveloped properties.
“We are trying to work with our local legislators to get the governor’s attention to make a visit to the site, because a picture is worth a thousand words,” Kervandjian said. “Yeah, on paper it sounds like a good idea. But when you come to it and when you walk through it, if you can do something with it and there is a willing and able developer that’s asking for just some cooperation with some favorable financing… you’ve got to do something, so we’re willing to do that.”
Kervandjian declined to share a specific dollar amount his company is seeking. (As a point of reference, Namdar purchased the Nittany Mall for $17 million in 2014, according to county records, but that was more than a decade ago and did not come with a major redevelopment of the property.)
Business in Our Sites has no set maximum loan amount, and grant amounts may not exceed $4 million or 40% of the combined loan and grant total, whichever is less.
If approved, PrimeCore would be eligible for a construction loan. The grant portion requires a municipal partner, and the College Township Industrial Development Authority has agreed to be the applicant for the grant.
“The College Township Industrial Development Authority is actively supporting the ongoing efforts related to the potential local acquisition and long-term redevelopment of the Nittany Mall site,” Keri Kenepp, College Township director of community and economic development and executive director of the CTIDA, wrote in an email to StateCollege.com. “Given the scale and strategic economic importance of the property, CTIDA’s role is focused on helping to facilitate coordination, leverage available tools, and support partners working toward a thoughtful and economically sustainable outcome.
“As part of that effort, CTIDA is positioned to serve as the applicant for the DCED Business in Our Sites grant component. This allows the project team to pursue critical funding that can assist with site readiness (i.e. parking lot, sidewalk, utilities), which is a key step in positioning the property for future investment and redevelopment.”
The CTIDA and the CBICC also have committed $50,000 and $10,000, respectively, toward the project, contingent on the grant and loan award, as a show of local support.
“Generally, the state wants to see that the local community is engaged and supportive, not just supportive from a letter of support, but they have to see dollars put into it,” Scott said. “Our board stepped up and said, ‘Listen, if you get this, we’re willing to put $10,000 dollars into this project because it really fits with our mission of creating jobs and creating growth.’ And so the board felt very strongly about it.”
For both the township and the chamber, the mall is a key property in the Dale Summit area of Benner Pike, East College Avenue and Shiloh Road — a prime zone for development and growth in Centre County.
Multiple commercial and residential developments are already in the works in the Shiloh Road corridor, with more anticipated.
College Township also has been advancing plans for Dale Summit’s revitalization through modern land-use strategies, most notably the forthcoming adoption of form-based code for the area, which, as Kenepp explained, aims “to encourage a more vibrant, walkable, and mixed-use environment over time that reduces the seas of parking lots and allows for more functional land use.”
“The redevelopment of the mall property aligns with that vision and represents an opportunity to reimagine the site in a way that better meets current market conditions and community needs,” Kenepp said.
The CBICC’s Centre County Economic Development Strategic Plan, meanwhile, identified Dale Summit, where the mall is one of the defining fixtures, as one of two areas ripe for development (the other being the airport district in Patton and Benner townships).
“And as we all locally know, that mall has just been slowly dying, because the owners of it really aren’t interested in developing it, making it something great,” Scott said. “So the idea that we have a local developer that’s interested, willing to invest capital and go through the process of hopefully buying it and transforming it into something special was really of interest to us. We also felt it squarely fell into that economic development strategic plan as one of the big pieces moving forward. So we just bought into the vision that Ara has.”
Kervandjian’s efforts to gain state support also have the backing of College Township’s representation in the General Assembly.
State Rep. Paul Takac, D-College Township, said he sees the plan as an opportunity to boost the local economy, create jobs and enhance quality of life for residents and visitors.
“The proposed redevelopment of the Nittany Mall offers an opportunity to unlock the site’s full potential by transforming the property into a dynamic hub that integrates retail, dining, entertainment, and community spaces, reflecting how people want to live, work, and gather,” Takac wrote in an email to StateCollege.com. “Flexible outdoor spaces, meeting and event venues, and family-friendly attractions will help draw regional tourism, foster community engagement, and contribute to workforce growth and retention in Centre County.”
He added that state, county and local governments, private investors and community groups “can play a significant and positive role in attracting this investment and supporting our local economy.”
Building and Expanding on Casino’s Draw
Kervandjian described the plan as three-pronged in how it can complement and build on business development in the region. Two of those are how it fits into the Dale Summit revitalization and the countywide economic development strategic plan.
The third is to expand on the draw of the newly opened Happy Valley Casino.
“We believe that there is a lot of opportunity there, because of the casino at that location,” Kervandjian said, adding that the mall redevelopment is intended to appeal beyond the 21-and-older clientele of the casino.
CBICC’s Scott said that the greater mall revitalization and the casino can be mutually beneficial with the right development.
“We even talked about some higher end restaurants being in the mall,” Scott said. “If the right kind of development comes in there, you can see that feeding off of the casino — people wanting to go in there and have, even though the casino is going to have a restaurant, some other restaurant options in there, and certainly retail. The casino is a big catalyst that could move that forward.”
A thriving mall would no doubt be welcomed by the casino’s management.
The casino has an entry and exit point to the mall’s interior, but for now it remains closed, with the main public access being on the exterior College Avenue side.
“Currently, the Nittany Mall is not necessarily the hive of activity that we hope it develops into as we get up and going,” general manager Eric Pearson said during a media tour of the casino on April 23. “We have to staff every entrance… We definitely want to be open to the mall a lot but it also doesn’t make a tremendous amount of sense for us from a labor standpoint to staff a security officer over there to stare at the mall with no one in it yet, but… I do know that interest in leasing spaces in the mall has significantly increased in recent weeks, which is very exciting for us.
“We very much want the mall to sort of reinvigorate. Part of the reason why we wanted to come here was to have the built-in infrastructure and have the foot traffic of a mall.”
What’s Next
The Business in Our Sites application period is currently open through June 30. Kervandjian said his team has been in contact with the DCED and that he hopes the application will be reviewed favorably.
“[The mall redevelopment] needs a significant amount of investment and time,” he said. “You have to turn the big beast around. So we need some assistance from the commonwealth, that if we’re able to succeed, then the benefits will come from real estate taxes, commercial taxes, et cetera.”
Kenepp said the CTIDA “remains committed to supporting a collaborative, transparent process with public and private partners.”
The CBICC also continues to advocate for the project.
“We’re still fighting for that and using whatever leverage and connections we have to try to continue to bring this project to the forefront and show how important it is to our community and to drive economic development across the state,” Scott said. “We remain hopeful that we can get some funds, because it’s really going to take that.”
If the Business in Our Sites financing does not pan out, Kervandjian said he will try to continue to work with the state in an effort to find another program that does fit the project.
“We believe in it, and this comes back to being a community member,” he said. “I love this town. So, what we can do out there will be really exciting.”
