At the Paramus Park mall, it seems, if the moms are happy, everyone is happy. On Tuesday, however, the moms were unhappy about the news that an old-fashioned carousel that has kept generations of children amused for nearly 40 years has twirled its last tot.
BOYD A. LOVING / SPECIAL TO THE RECORD
The carousel at Paramus Park mall has closed.
“‘Meet me at the carousel’ cannot be said anymore,” said Caren Fassbender, the mother of a 2-year-old and a frequent visitor to the mall, which has carved out a niche as Bergen County’s mom-friendly shopping center. “It was a Bergen County icon.”
The small, 18-seat ride – the Golden Horse Carousel — was shut down Tuesday, and will be removed from the mall within the next two weeks, said Minnie Adams, the mall’s manager. She said Paramus Park did not renew carousel’s lease, and the mall plans to temporarily use the space it occupied for its Santa Claus station during the holidays.
The ride’s operators began telling customers last week that carousel was leaving Paramus Park, Adams said.
News of the carousel’s closing spread rapidly among the moms of Bergen County, who took to Facebook and other social media sites to comment on the move, and in at least one case to mount a “Save the Carousel” campaign.
Tara Diamond-Kule of Glen Rock wrote about the carousel removal on Monday on her blog, Know-it-all in NJ, and called on fellow mothers to call the mall office and email the mall’s manager urging them to spare the carousel.“The backlash from moms is very strong,” she said.
Diamond-Kule, 39, grew up in New Milford, and remembers riding the carousel as a girl. In recent years she has enjoyed visiting it with her son, now 4. “I know a lot of people who went to the mall to take their kids on a final ride,” she said in a telephone interview Tuesday evening. “I know I did.”
Paramus Park is preparing to build a major addition that will include a movie theater and several new restaurants, but construction work related to the addition is planned for the opposite side of the mall from the wing where the carousel stands. Diamond-Kule said she understands that the mall needs to remodel and stay current, but she doesn’t understand why the carousel simply couldn’t have been moved to another part of the mall. “It’s not that big,” she said. “I feel like it could fit in someone’s backyard. I’ve seen bounce houses that are bigger.”
Paramus Park was considered Bergen County’s state-of-the art showplace mall when it opened in 1974. For 25 years, nothing changed, and fans of the mall liked that. When changes eventually were made, they usually were accompanied by protests. In 1999, management removed the two-story waterfall in the center of the shopping center, triggering similar complaints that “Meet me at the waterfall” was an essential part of the Paramus Park experience.
Joan Gaige, who managed the carousel for its owners, the Hackensack accounting firm Bowen & Bowen, said the carousel’s operators did not want to leave the mall. “It was a mall decision,” she said, “not ours.”
Adams, the mall manager, said in an email that Paramus Park doesn’t “have any announcements to make at this time regarding what will replace The Golden Horse Carousel for the long term, but when that time comes, we know our shoppers will be just as excited as we are.”
The mall is owned by General Growth Properties, which also owns Willowbrook Mall in Wayne. Adams said it is “constantly evaluating the evolving needs of the market and working hard to meet those needs and expectations.”
Paramus Park is viewed as the “small mall” in comparison to the Westfield Garden State Plaza, which sits to the south on Route 17 and is the largest mall in New Jersey. Paramus Park is seen as having more mom-friendly shops and features than Bergen Town Center, also in Paramus, or The Shops at Riverside in Hackensack. The carousel sits in a wing named the Carousel Court, surrounded by a children’s photo studio, children’s clothing retailers and other kid-friendly merchants.
Fassbender and other parents who were eating at the Tom Sawyer diner Tuesday evening said that losing the carousel will make them think twice about visiting Paramus Park. “When you’re at home with a toddler full time, you need something to do – especially on a rainy day,” Fassbender said.
“They need to have things for kids if they want families to go to the mall,” said Karen Asta of Waldwick, the mother of a 2-year-old. She used to ride the carousel as a child with her brothers.
“How do we blackmail the kids to get them to the mall?” she said. The carousel was the answer, she said. “That’s how our mom got us to the mall.”
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