by 1977. Also in 1973, a shopping complex (called Fordham Plaza Development or Fordham Road Plaza Development) was planned for construction on the undeveloped Postal Service site, anchored by the E. J. Korvette department store. The 10-story site would have contained office space for Con Edison and extended south to 188th Street, with 189th Street to be demapped. The project would also include a parking garage, a car dealership, and a scaled-down version of the planned central post office. The project had been proposed in part to stave off blight and economic downturn in the area due to the 1970s fiscal crisis, which had led city officials to try to prevent Fordham University from relocating out of the borough and into Westchester County, in addition to declare Fordham Road the northern boundary of the South Bronx to reduce the stigma of Fordham being associated with the rundown South Bronx. While construction was planned to be completed by mid-1977, it was delayed by negotiations with the Postal Service (who were asking $8 million for the sale of the site after paying $1.8 million a decade earlier), and ultimately stopped in 1981 when the application for federal funds for the project was frozen. Later redevelopment In 1981, the Sears location on Webster Avenue opened within the former space of the Rogers Department Store branch. In October 1984, a groundbreaking ceremony was held for One Fordham Plaza, the successor to the mall project of the 1970s and the first new office complex in the borough in over 25 years. The Skidmore, Owings & Merrill-designed structure was built on the former Postal Service property that had been a vacant urban-renewal site for over a decade prior; the USPS was paid $1.4 million in 1983 to give up the plot and move to a smaller site one block south on East 188th Street, which is now the Fordham Post Office. The structure was complete by 1985, and it opened in August 1986 at the cost of about $65 million. Upon opening, it was predominantly leased by city and state agencies, while much of the retail space was vacant. The building was over 95 percent occupied by 1991. Prior to the 1990s, what is now the Fordham Plaza Bus Terminal was a peddler's market, metered parking lot, and bus layover area. In the 1980s, it was proposed to redevelop the site into a bus terminal and