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A former Pottery Barn at Tysons Corner Center is becoming a candy-themed playground as the mall accelerates its shift from traditional retail toward immersive entertainment.
Hershey Super Sweet Adventure is scheduled to open March 6 with a Twizzlers maze, hands-on games and cannons that fire balls into holes shaped like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. The family attraction is a partnership between The Hershey Company and Original X Productions.
Kelly Easterling, a senior vice president at Original X Productions, said visitors will enter a whimsical workshop filled with interactive games, multisensory activities and playful experiences designed for families to explore together.
The company previously brought The Friends Experience and The Office Experience to the D.C. area.
A second family attraction, Sloomoo Institute, is also headed to the Macerich-owned mall. The slime-focused venue will occupy two levels near Nordstrom in space that previously housed the Paul Mitchell beauty school, which closed in 2024.
The Tysons site will become Sloomoo’s eighth or ninth location, depending on whether another outpost under construction in Charlotte, North Carolina, opens first.
Sloomoo co-founder and CEO Karen Robinovitz said guests can smear slime on walls, walk across hundreds of gallons of it and design their own slime—activities that would be difficult to recreate at home.
Both companies expect their attractions to benefit other businesses at Tysons. Easterling said families visiting the Hershey experience may also shop or have dinner at the mall. Robinovitz said tourists account for about half of the visitors across Sloomoo’s existing locations.
Malls Find New Uses for Empty Stores
The additions reflect a nationwide movement to fill spaces vacated by conventional retailers with pickleball courts, bowling alleys, arcades and other attractions.
Jie Zhang, a retail and marketing professor at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, said the transformation began about two decades ago as online shopping replaced more in-person purchases. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated that change.
With consumers no longer visiting malls solely to buy products, Zhang said property owners must turn their buildings into destinations with broader purposes. Studies have found that malls adding more dining and entertainment can achieve significant rebounds in foot traffic.
The same strategy is unfolding at Potomac Mills in Woodbridge.
The Simon Malls property recently opened the indoor Kids Jungle Playground, which replaced a women’s clothing store. Slick City Action Park, featuring waterless slides, is expected to open by summer in spaces formerly occupied by andThat! and Buy Buy Baby, chains that closed in 2023 and 2024.
Ace Pickleball Club plans to open during the second half of 2026 in the former American Freight furniture store.
Those businesses will join existing attractions including Round1 Bowling and Arcade, the Aim Point airsoft shooting range and Off Limitz Adventure Park, which offers Ninja Warrior and ropes courses.
Bethany Webb, Potomac Mills’ director of marketing and business development, said entertainment had been a missing part of the mall’s evolving mix. The attractions allow entire families to visit together and potentially spend hours—or a full day—at the property.
Retailers Add Experiences of Their Own
Some stores are also making entertainment part of the shopping experience.
DICK’S Sporting Goods began opening its House of Sport megastores in 2021. The locations can feature climbing walls, batting cages, playing fields and, in some cases, ice rinks. One is planned for Annapolis Mall, where Zhang said new ownership is investing heavily after the property experienced difficult years.
About 1,000 regional shopping malls remain in the United States. Zhang estimated that roughly one-quarter are in excellent condition and should continue performing well, while the others will need to adapt to survive.
She expressed optimism that many will successfully make the transition. Over the next 10 to 20 years, she expects consumers to increasingly see malls as activity centers rather than places primarily devoted to shopping.
Traditional malls once allocated about 70% of their space to retail and 30% to dining, entertainment and other nonretail uses. Industry experts are now recommending that nonretail businesses occupy as much as half of a mall’s space.
For mall operators, Zhang said, that changing balance may be necessary not only to survive but to thrive.