Now, the center's time is up. The Army is expected to make an official announcement about the closing on Thursday. A news conference at the mall site is planned for Friday.
The center "did what it was supposed to do. It was a success," said Brian Lepley, a spokesman for the Army Accessions Command, headquarters for Army recruiting. "Senior Army leadership up and down the chain of command decided it would not be continued."
Parts of the center, such as the touch-screen computers, may turn up at recruiting stations. Some stations have expressed an interest in the simulators.
"The biggest part of this was using the technology," Lepley said. "Recruiters have used tricolor brochures, but that doesn't work with the digital generation. We have to keep up with the way people get their information."
The center tested computer technology "and we may get that into recruiting stations. There are hundreds of them across the country," he said. "But we'd have to figure out what the cost would be and how to field it."
The Army also could decide to put another such center in another area of the country.
Philadelphia's 14,500-square-foot facility opened in August 2008. At the time, said one top Army recruiting official, the Philadelphia metropolitan area and most of New Jersey had "the lowest propensity toward military service in the nation." New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles also were challenges. The center was viewed as a possible prototype.
Since then, recruitment in the region has increased, possibly because of the lack of jobs in the recession as well as the impact of the center. In the immediate Philadelphia area, recruitment is up at least 15 percent, the Army said.
