Monroeville Mall is a shopping mall located in the municipality of Monroeville, Pennsylvania, east of Pittsburgh. It is located along heavily traveled U.S. Route 22 Business (US 22 Bus.) near the junction of Interstate 376 (I-376) and the Monroeville interchange of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It was completed in 1969, extensively renovated and expanded in 2003–2004, and includes Barnes & Noble, Cinemark Theatres, Dick's Sporting Goods, JCPenney, and Macy's as anchor tenants. It contains of leaseable retail space on , making it the largest shopping complex in Western Pennsylvania in terms of square footage. It is one of two CBL-owned malls in the Pittsburgh area, the other being Westmoreland Mall in Greensburg. Adjacent to Monroeville Mall, several major shopping centers including the Miracle Mile Shopping Center, well-known national retailers and restaurants can be found along the U.S. Route 22 commercial corridor, the biggest such concentration of retailers and other commercial businesses in the eastern environs of the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Area. It is located at Mall Circle Drive, across from Monroeville Convention Center, venue of the Pittsburgh Comicon, a comic book convention, from 2009 to 2014. With 150 stores, Monroeville Mall is currently the eighth largest shopping mall in Pennsylvania. The mall is famous for being the filming location of the 1978 George A. Romero horror film Dawn of the Dead. History Before the 1950s postwar migration movement, Monroeville was predominantly a rural farming area. The opening of the Pennsylvania Turnpike in the early 1950s followed by completion of Interstate 376 (Parkway East) in the early 1960s would expedite the growth of Monroeville and the eastern suburbs. In November 1954, the Miracle Mile Shopping Center opened for business with numerous shops and eateries. As the novelty of shopping malls made them increasingly popular in the 1960s, residents of Monroeville and the eastern suburbs shopped at the now-defunct Eastland Mall in nearby North Versailles, or at Greengate Mall (now demolished and rebuilt as Greengate Centre) in Greensburg, Westmoreland County. Proposal In the mid-1960s, Don-Mark Realty (later Oxford Development Company) proposed building the largest shopping mall in the United States in the form of Monroeville Mall. For the development, Don-Mark acquired a tract known as Harper's Mine. Despite local residents questioning whether the land was indeed a prime location for development, Don-Mark was confident that the site was perfect for the proposed mall. By 1966, grading equipment would begin leveling part of the massive