Town Center at Boca Raton

Town Center at Boca Raton, often referred to as Boca Town Center, Town Center Mall, or simply Town Center, is an upscale shopping mall located in Boca Raton, Florida, United States (approximately 30 miles south of West Palm Beach and 20 miles north of Fort Lauderdale). It has been owned and operated by Simon Property Group since 1998. The mall features Macy's, Nordstrom, Bloomingdale's, Neiman Marcus, and Saks Fifth Avenue.

The mall is the largest enclosed and conventional shopping mall in Palm Beach County, and is the third largest in total by square footage in South Florida, behind Sawgrass Mills and Aventura Mall.

History

The mall opened on August 13, 1980, on a site just west of Interstate 95 directly on Glades Road. Originally, the one-story mall was anchored by Florida-based Burdines

Incidents

2007 murders

In 2007, several murders at the mall drew national attention. In March, a 52-year-old woman was kidnapped and murdered. In December, 47-year-old Nancy Bochicchio and her 7-year-old daughter Joey were also kidnapped and later found bound and shot in the head in the woman's SUV in the mall parking lot. In addition, a similar incident occurred at the mall in August 2007, in which a Jane Doe and her 2-year-old son were kidnapped and tied up in their car by a male assailant after he forced the woman to make a cash withdrawal via an ATM.

This case was featured on America's Most Wanted and caused host John Walsh to say he believed a serial killer was active in the city. Though there is no forensic evidence to definitely establish the murders were committed by the same person, the similarities in the cases led police to believe they were related. The murders all remain unsolved.[8][9][10][11]

Israel Keyes (1978–2012) was considered a possible suspect for the Boca murders.[12] He was arrested in 2012 on suspicion of committing a murder in Alaska, and killed himself in prison after confessing to several murders but before he could be tried in court. He was a tall, slender athletic white man, physically similar to the culprit described by the kidnapped mother who survived her encounter.[12] As of 2019, Keyes's known travels and timeline cannot rule him out as a suspect for the Boca murders, given his established habit of traveling far from home to commit murders of random victims.[12] Furthermore, in other of Keyes's known crimes, he withdrew money from ATMs tied to his victims.[12]

2019 active shooter scare

On October 13, 2019, shoppers allegedly heard quick pops reminiscent of gunfire, leading to a mall-wide panic.[13] SWAT teams conducted grid searches across the mall, later evacuating patrons and employees on a store-by-store basis.[14] After clearing the mall, investigators determined that there was no evidence of any gunfire, and that the only injury, other than minor injuries as results of tripping and falling in the midst of the chaos, was a trauma wound faced by a man evacuating, running into a door.[15][16] Police found that the noise came from a janitor in the food court who popped a balloon stuck to his trash cart.[17]

2022 shooting

A shooting took place on mall property on April 6, 2022, injuring one person in the leg and prompting a large police presence.[18] The mall was briefly locked down, leading some visitors and staff to shelter in place, but an active shooter threat was quickly dismissed and the incident was categorized as "isolated".[19]

Fire of 2026

Shortly before 7:00 pm on April 2nd 2026, a fire broke out in the food court in a restaurant named Tobu, which the local fire department claimed was a grease fire.[20] If the fire containment system was not covered in cooking grease it would not have caused a large portion of the roof to be damaged beyond repair although reconstruction efforts are being made to restore the roof to its original condition.

location	Boca Raton, Florida, U.S.
coordinates	26.36582°N, -80.13355°W
address	6000 Glades Road
developer	Arvida Corp., Homart Development Co.,‡R1R‡ and Federated Stores Realty
manager	Simon Property Group
owner	Simon Property Group
architect	RTKL Associates
number of stores	206
number of anchors	5
floor area	1,778,660 sqft
parking	8,000
floors	1 (2 in outdoor terrace, Saks Fifth Avenue, Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus, 3 in Macy's and Bloomingdale's)
website	Official website