Christmas is over but the season is not, meaning Deptford Township continues to be a popular destination for people throughout the Delaware Valley.
Trips to see Santa Claus at the mall may be derailed until next November, but the days after Christmas and before New Year’s keep consumers armed with gift cards and unwanted gifts going to the shopping district for buying and returning items. So if you’re headed out, be prepared for traffic.
“Things are going well,” Deptford Township Mayor Paul Medany said of the annual holiday rush through his hometown. “There are a lot of moving parts, but as far as the shopping district and the mall, things have been working out real well. Traffic control is good. … We couldn’t be happier. Stores are busy and the mall is good.”
Deptford is perhaps unlike any other place in South Jersey. It’s a small town – fewer than 18 square miles, according to the township’s website – but during the six-week period between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, Deptford welcomes more people than it could fit homes for: thousands upon thousands of holiday-shopping non-residents.
Comparing the number of people in Deptford on any given day in December, to say, any day in May, is akin to counting the number of people in State College, Pa., on a football Saturday in September to the number of people in the same town on a Wednesday in June.
“On any given day (during the year) it’s about 60,000 people in Deptford,” said Medany, who was quoting emergency management data. “We have about 32,000 that live here, but that doubles according to how many people on any given day. (But during the holidays), at least 200,000 people pass through Deptford on a daily basis.
“That sounds like a lot, but I think it’s even more now because the last time we received those stats was two years ago. That’s probably increased. But it’s at least 200 grand every day.”
When you put that many people into one, small, concentrated area at the same time, you obviously cannot control them all or prevent unfortunate events.
Like on the night of Dec. 7 outside the Modell’s Sporting Goods entrance at the mall, where an alleged assault took place over a parking space. According to the ongoing investigation posted by the Deptford Township Police Department on its Facebook page, which also included security video footage, seven people converged on the first Friday night of the month and a dispute unfolded. The females that were injured during the incident refused medical treatment at the scene.
Since the investigation is ongoing, it’s unclear exactly what happened unless you go strictly on the alleged victim’s account. As Medany explained, one incident over the course of a busy six-week period isn’t welcomed, but perhaps it’s also not surprising.
On the whole, “the percentages are very, very small,” Medany said. “We’re fortunate.”
When you do the math, Deptford welcomes the equivalent of about three Lincoln Financial Fields worth of people to town daily during the holidays.
“If you get thousands of human beings together in close proximity, I would think there might be an incident here or there,” Medany said. “Around the holidays peoples’ anxiety are up and they’re trying to get things done, running around and in a rush. I personally believe that people are good intentioned, but tempers flare sometime and I think we handle it well.”
Since the Deptford Mall is more than 43 years old, the yearly shopping pilgrimage to Deptford isn’t exactly a recent development. People from all over Gloucester County and parts of Camden County, as well as people making the quick and easy drive over the Walt Whitman Bridge from South Philly, have long made trips to Deptford a regular event during this time of year.
Even with the increase in online shopping and the subtraction of some big box stores (especially Toys R Us this year, the first Christmas season since it shut down operations and closed stores), the shopping traffic hasn’t slowed in and around the perimeter of the mall, where it and several of its surrounding shopping centers are thriving.
So how does the township handle it?
“Most of the issues, 99 percent of them, are traffic issues,” Medany said. “Fender benders, there’s just so much traffic. Let’s face it, when there’s that much traffic, there’s bound to be somebody bumping into somebody’s fender. But they plan for this all year around. This is an ongoing thing. They meet with mall security and mall management. So it’s a year-round plan to get through this season. There are (police officers) working overtime, some stores hire our guys for traffic control.”
Despite all of the extra work and manpower throughout the holiday shopping season, there has at least been one recent trend that’s helped quiet some of the annual traffic mayhem. In short: Black Friday isn’t what it used to be.
“It’s been moved up a bit, spread out (over multiple days),” Medany said. “That’s helped us tremendously. Because we’re still getting the same volume of shoppers, only it’s a little bit more spread out. And with all of the restaurants, people are coming in (to town) and relaxing, too. It’s not just coming in to buy toys and getting out of here.”
