March 15, 2023
Willow Grove Park Mall/Facebook
The arcade at Tilted 10 in the Willow Grove Park Mall features more than 150 games. The family entertainment center will fully open this summer on two floors. It also will include bowling, laser tag, mini golf and bumper cars.
The Willow Grove Park Mall in Abington Township has opened the first phase of its long-planned Tilted 10 entertainment center, which includes bumper cars and an arcade with more than 150 games.
The second floor of the family attraction, located in the former J.C. Penney department store, is now complete. Construction on the first floor is expected to be finished this summer. It will feature black-lit mini golf, a laser tag arena, bowling lanes, and a taco and margarita bar.
Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust, the mall's owner, revealed its plans for the 104,000-square-foot entertainment center in October 2021 as part of an overhaul of the former J.C. Penney store, which closed in 2017. PREIT has not yet disclosed its plans for the former Sears department store that closed last year after more than three decades.
Tilted 10 does not have an entrance fee. Instead, points can be purchased at a kiosk and loaded onto a Tilted 10 play card. Once the facility is fully opened, Tilted 10 will sell packages for birthday parties and other private events. (Those with a long memory of the mall may recall birthday parties at the former Challenges arcade near the food court in the 1990s).
TGIF! Come celebrate the weekend with us at Tilted 10 Willow Grove, our newest family entertainment center, with 150+...
Posted by Willow Grove Park Mall on Friday, March 10, 2023
An opening date for the first floor of Tilted 10 has not yet been announced.
PREIT has described the new entertainment complex as return to the roots of the property, which operated as an amusement park from 1896 to 1975 and had a streetcar service operated by the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Co. The three-story mall opened in its current form in 1982. One of the original park's biggest attractions was its Music Pavilion, where John Philip Sousa's band played annually during the first quarter of the 20th century.
"This unique entertainment experience brings something that people can't find anywhere else, making Willow Grove Park Mall a must-see destination for Philadelphia this year," PREIT CEO and chairman Joseph Coradino said.
The debut of Tilted 10 comes as PREIT seeks to build more than 1,400 apartments on the land of its Philadelphia area properties, including the Willow Grove and Plymouth Meeting malls in Montgomery County and the Springfield Mall in Delaware County. PREIT already is constructing hundreds of apartments at the Moorestown Mall in South Jersey. The company is also a part-owner of the Fashion District Philadelphia mall in Center City.
PREIT filed for bankruptcy protection in 2020 and emerged from it later that year, but still carried about $1.8 billion in debts as of last November — mostly from mortgages and loans. It has sold some of its properties, including the Exton Square Mall in Chester County and the Cumberland Mall in Vineland, New Jersey. The company said sales at its core malls, including the Cherry Hill Mall, hit a record in February.
Tilted 10 has 13 entertainment centers in the U.S., including one at the Logan Valley Mall in Altoona.
