Breaking ground for outlet shopping
It’s hard to imagine that the stretch of Route 1 between Lewes and Rehoboth Beach was once mostly farm fields. But that all changed with the introduction of outlet mall shopping in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In summer 1988, Land Design Inc. of Ocean View paid $165,000 per acre for 13 acres of land just north of Rehoboth Beach. That land was used to build the first 90,000 square feet of Ocean Outlets, which is now Tanger Outlets Seaside. The first outlets opened in April 1989 with 30 stores. It cost $10 million to build the first mall.
In May 1990, 13 stores and a mini golf course were added. Also in 1990, the Seaside Ocean Outlets, now Tanger Outlets Bayside, opened with 83,000 square feet of retail space. It was expanded by 151,000 square feet in 1995. Ocean Outlets was purchased by Charter Oak Partners of Vienna, Va., in March 1994.
In November 1994, Fisher Development Company broke ground for the 194,000-square-foot Rehoboth Outlet Center on 21 acres in Midway. The developer paid $2.5 million for the site that comprised three properties. What is now Tanger Outlets Surfside opened before Memorial Day 1995. An expansion was proposed that would’ve extended the shopping center to Postal Lane, but it ran into issues with the state Department of Transportation. Ownership of all three outlet malls was consolidated in 1996 when Charter Oak Partners acquired the Rehoboth Outlet Center. Tanger Factory Outlet Centers Inc. then purchased Charter Oak Partners’ portfolio of nine factory outlet centers in December 2003. In addition to the Rehoboth outlets, the deal also included outlets in Alabama, South Carolina, Utah, New Hampshire, Oregon, Connecticut and Illinois.
Following the outlets, K-Mart in 1994 purchased 15 acres just north of the original Ocean Outlets. It opened a 57,000-square-foot building shortly thereafter. It remained open until 2017, when K-Mart downsized and the building was split into several smaller units. K-Mart shuttered in 2021, with an Aldi opening in its space later that year. Lighthouse Plaza, with Giant as its anchor today, opened about 80,000 square feet of shopping space in 1995. The Rehoboth Marketplace shopping center, where Shell We Golf is today, received approval from Sussex County in 1997. After the Rehoboth Outlet Center expansion fell through, the developers of Pelican Square received approval to build a shopping center in 1998. The Shops at Sea Coast, with Safeway as its anchor, opened in 2004.
Predating the shopping expansion between Lewes and Rehoboth were Midway Shopping Center, built in 1954, and the Rehoboth Mall, which was granted approval by Sussex County Council in 1984.
