Wilton Mall reopens after sprinkler failure forced Sunday closure

After a Saturday fire call turned up a faulty sprinkler and hydrant pump station, Wilton Mall was closed all day Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026. The mall at 3065 Route 50 in the Town of Wilton reopened Monday morning, Oct. 26, under a fire watch, after the owners switched the building’s fire sprinklers and hydrants from a well system to municipal water.

No fire was found. The Greenfield Fire District, with automatic mutual aid, was called at 4:51 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24, for a reported commercial structure fire. Crews found two failed circuit breakers in an electrical panel inside one of the mall’s in-line stores, according to a Greenfield Fire District press release issued Oct. 27. Mall staff had already cut power to that store before firefighters got there, which kept the trouble to that one panel.

The bigger problem came out of the checks crews run on every reported fire. Firefighters found a deficiency in the fire sprinkler and hydrant pump station, and the district turned the scene over to the Town of Wilton’s code enforcement and fire marshal office. The mall uses a Saratoga Springs mailing address, but the fire district’s release places the property in the town of Wilton.

Here is where things stood as of Wednesday, Oct. 28:

• The mall is open again, and a limited fire watch was still in place Tuesday, the Daily Gazette reported.
• Sprinkler lines and fire hydrants at the mall are working, now fed by municipal water.
• The Saratoga Hospital offices in the mall kept seeing scheduled patients, and the inside passage to the rest of the mall reopened Tuesday, Oct. 27.
• The owners still have to file designs, certification and other paperwork to make the water switch official.

How a breaker call shut the whole mall

Wilton Mall posted the closure on Facebook around 8 p.m. Saturday, the Daily Gazette reported. A notice at the exterior entrance of Healthy Living, the grocery store in the mall, said the fire suppression system was out of service and barred entry after 8 p.m. by order of the fire marshal. A children’s play space and a tattoo studio in the mall also warned customers in posts that evening.

On Sunday every store was closed, from JCPenney and Dick’s Sporting Goods to BJ’s Wholesale Club and Healthy Living, according to the Gazette and NEWS10. Signs on the doors cited the fire marshal and a fire suppression system failure. Gazette photos from Sunday morning showed a woman with a ground-penetrating radar scanner outside the pump house beside the mall, near the Dick’s entrance.

What the owners changed over the weekend

Faraz Khan, managing partner of Wilton Mall Development LLC, told the Gazette the decision to shut down came Saturday. Closing gave the municipal water authority a window to turn the water off so the upgrade could be made, he said. The switch from the well system to municipal water ran from Sunday into early Monday morning.

Khan also said the mall could have stayed open safely on Sunday under a fire watch, and that the owners closed out of an abundance of caution. The fire district’s release does not take up that question. The district reported working closely with town officials, mall management and independent contractors at the scene, and said that “pre-plans were immediately updated to ensure adequate protection was still provided.” The district did not say what the pump station deficiency was, and said no further details were available.

Hospital access came back Tuesday

Fire safety officers kept a continuous fire watch on Monday, and the Daily Gazette reported Tuesday that a limited watch was still in place.

The Saratoga Hospital offices, in the former Sears space the hospital took over in 2019, stayed open as usual for scheduled appointments. For most of Monday there was no way to walk between the hospital space and the inside of the mall. That interior access reopened Tuesday. If you have an appointment at the hospital’s primary care office in the mall, Suite 30, the office is open weekdays from 7:15 a.m. to 5:40 p.m., and the phone is 518-886-5800, according to the health system’s location page.

What still has to be filed

Khan said the water authority, the sewer department and the Wilton Building Department gave the mall expedited permission for the work, and that a lot of pieces are still moving. “We just need to submit the designs, certification, and all the associated paperwork,” he told the Gazette. Here is what remains open:

• Wilton Mall Development still has to submit designs for the new sprinkler and hydrant water supply.
• The owners also owe certification and related paperwork before the upgrade is officially complete.
• The Town of Wilton’s code enforcement and fire marshal office now handles the case, after the fire district transferred the scene.
• No cause for the pump station deficiency had been made public as of Oct. 28.

Who owns Wilton Mall now

Wilton Mall Development bought the roughly 100-acre property from Macerich in March 2025, the Gazette has reported. Macerich’s 2025 annual report to the SEC dates the sale to March 27, 2025, puts the price at $24.8 million and describes the mall as a 740,000-square-foot regional retail center. Macerich took a $2.9 million loss on the deal. The mall opened in 1990.

Khan, who also owns a shopping center in Clifton Park, introduced himself to the Wilton Town Board on April 3, 2025, a week after the sale. He told the board the mall had been “a little neglected for the past several years” and that reviving the mall came before any apartments. He also said he planned to add a pizza place, a coffee shop and possibly a Mediterranean restaurant to a food court that had one Chinese restaurant, according to the meeting minutes.

The previous owner had a different plan. Macerich had won town approval for housing with a developer partner, 296 apartments and 86 townhomes in place of the Bon-Ton wing, vacant since that store left in August 2018, according to WNYT and the Gazette. Khan told the town board he would keep and renovate the Bon-Ton building instead. In July 2025 he told the Gazette that any housing on the site would not be worked on until 2027 at the earliest.

JCPenney and Dick’s Sporting Goods are still the two big retail anchors. Saratoga Hospital uses about 82,000 square feet in the old Sears space, the Gazette reported in 2025, and Khan told the Gazette last year that talks about the hospital taking more room were very preliminary. Healthy Living has been in the mall since March 2013, and the grocer opened a fourth store, in Halfmoon, on Oct. 15. Since the sale, a paint studio, a dessert bar and a shop for sports memorabilia and trading cards have opened in the mall, the Gazette reported in May. A summer carnival was scheduled for the back parking lot June 10 to 14 after skipping 2025, the Gazette reported in May. For the food court, which the Gazette described as nearly vacant in 2025, Khan has pitched an international food hall.

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