Wayfair plans to open a roughly 96,000-square-foot store at the former Boulevard Mall in Amherst, with the shop expected in 2028. It is being described as the company's 12th store for in-person shopping.
The address carries the longer story. In a November 10, 2025 report, BTPM described a mall that nearly went into foreclosure in 2017, was bought in 2019 by Douglas Jemal with redevelopment hopes, and then lost tenants for years amid a back-and-forth with the town board. WKBW reported that Benderson Development owns the 64 acres after buying them from Doug Jemal for $15 million. WIVB News 4 reported Thursday that Wayfair expects to open there in 2028.
From A Massachusetts Store To Amherst
Wayfair's move into rooms people can walk through started well before Amherst. Fortune reported that the company opened its first brick-and-mortar store in Massachusetts in 2019. By September 29, 2025, the same outlet said Wayfair had 12 stores already open and three more under lease.
The company told Fortune that local sales in Chicago increased after a store opened there. The magazine did not put a figure on the increase. Physical stores, in that account, are a way to compete for furniture sales that otherwise stay on a website. Chicago is the only market where the reporting attaches a sales effect to an opening, and even that effect is the company's own unnumbered claim.
Amherst is a later entry, and a large one. WIVB describes a roughly 96,000-square-foot shop and calls it the 12th store for in-person shopping, expected in 2028. Wayfair's investor relations site, in a 2026 announcement, said the company's first Pennsylvania store, in Pittsburgh, is expected to open in 2027. Large floors, staggered across a few markets and a few years, is the expansion those announcements describe. Thursday's Amherst item did not add a local sales figure. It gave the town a year and a size.
One Tenant And An Open-Air Pitch
Eric Recoon, Benderson's vice president of development and leasing, put the store at the front of a much wider claim. It "marks the exciting first step in the transformation of the former Boulevard Mall," he told WIVB. The destination language came next. "Our vision is to create a vibrant, open-air destination that brings new retail, dining, entertainment and other experiences to the community," he said.
Other accounts list the ingredients and keep them provisional. WKBW reported that once the mall is demolished, plans call for a mixed-use property with retail, a community center, and housing. On November 7, 2025, WBEN reported preliminary plans that added a small pocket park. Preliminary is doing real work. Recoon has named a furniture retailer. Dining, entertainment, and a park are still categories in a quote and a sketch.
Benderson can speak for the whole parcel because WKBW reported that the company officially owns the 64 acres after the purchase from Doug Jemal. A 96,000-square-foot store is a serious tenant on that land. It is not, by itself, an open-air destination. Getting from Recoon's sentence to a place people use still runs through the demolition town officials have described, the housing acres Amherst wants to pass on, and at least one more name besides Wayfair.
What The $15 Million Sale Followed
The price makes more sense with the sequence in front of it. BTPM's November 10, 2025 report, written as the town board prepared to vote, compressed years of trouble into a few beats. The Boulevard Mall nearly went into foreclosure in 2017. Douglas Jemal bought it in 2019 hoping to redevelop it. Then came lost tenants and a running back-and-forth between Jemal and the board.
Benderson's purchase moved the property out of Jemal's hands. WKBW reported that the company officially owns the 64-acre site after buying it from Doug Jemal for $15 million. That figure was the price for the 64-acre property after a near-foreclosure and a tenant drain. The redevelopment case is about a different asset: land Benderson and the town now describe in terms of housing, retail, and a community use, rather than the mall that produced the sale price.
WKBW also reported that the mall had closed interior access ahead of demolition. In that account, the public corridor was already shut while demolition was still being discussed as work to come. Shawn Lavin, identified in November 2025 as deputy supervisor and supervisor-elect, told BTPM the site was not a blank slate. "The infrastructure has been built out to allow for additional residential properties, commercial properties and mixed-use properties," he said. Utilities and roads, in that telling, had gotten further than the redevelopment politics.
A Lease That Runs To 2080
The demolition plan has a lease problem sitting on top of it. WKBW reported that Amherst plans to use eminent domain to break agreements with JCPenney and Firestone, and that JCPenney's lease extends until 2080. A contract written to the far edge of the century is an awkward companion to a mall Thursday's announcement already calls former. Closing the interior and ending the paper are different jobs.
The town's reported start was a board vote, not a wrecking ball. On November 10, 2025, BTPM reported, the Town Board approved an agreement allowing Amherst to begin taking control of the property through eminent domain and then transfer it to Benderson for demolition. The station described an authorization to start. Benderson's role, in that account, is to demolish the mall after the transfer.
Lavin, whom WKBW identified as town supervisor, attached a deadline to the back end of that process. Once eminent domain is officially complete, he said, Benderson has nine months to finish demolishing the Boulevard Mall. In his formulation, those nine months start when the taking is done. WIVB's expected 2028 opening is a retail date beside that conditional clock, not a published schedule for designing and building the store.
There was already a local argument for wanting the work to start. On November 7, 2025, A.J. Baynes told WBEN that demolition and site-preparation work he expected in spring 2026 would be "a major psychological and economic boost for Amherst." Spring 2026 has passed. The line was a prediction about morale and money, dated to the month the town was lining up the legal process. It was not a report that the buildings had come down.
Thirteen Acres The Town Wants To Resell
Housing is the part of the plan with a method and a measurement. WKBW reported that Amherst will purchase 13 acres and resell them to a developer who will build housing units. Thirteen acres is about a fifth of the 64. In that account the town buys the parcel and sells it on to someone who builds, rather than building the units itself.
The non-retail pieces stay in outline. A community center is in the post-demolition mix WKBW described, and it shows up again in the preliminary plans WBEN reported in November 2025, along with a small pocket park. Lavin's comment that week is the town's reason for treating housing as plausible. The infrastructure, he said, was already built out for residential, commercial, and mixed-use property. Ready ground is an advantage. It is not a site plan, and the pocket park remains a line in a preliminary list.
The dates a resident can actually hold are less glossy than Recoon's destination. Wayfair is pointed at 2028. The JCPenney lease WKBW described runs to 2080 unless eminent domain cuts it short. After that process is officially complete, Lavin said, Benderson gets nine months to demolish the mall. A furniture store with a square footage, and a housing parcel with an acreage, are the two pieces Amherst can measure. Dining, entertainment, and the pocket park are still intentions with an open-air adjective attached.
