The address that turns up for this store on the Amarra and Ava Presley retailer locators — 4017 Washington Road, Suite 128, McMurray — is the UPS Store in Donaldson’s Crossroads, the plaza at Route 19 and McMurray Road, next to the Burger King. That store rents private mailboxes with a street address. Suite 128 is one of them. There are no dresses at that door.
The shop is in Finleyville, roughly seven miles east: 3526 Cliff Street, Suite A, the address The Prom Place lists on its own site and its own Facebook page. It runs by appointment only, and it says so in the largest type on its homepage. Booking is a Square scheduling link on promshopinfinleyville.com. The phone number, (724) 348-6444, is the same on the brand locators and on the store’s site, so the McMurray listing does reach the right people — it just sends you to the wrong side of Washington County.
What the store says it does: prom, homecoming, winter formal, and pageant. Amarra and Ava Presley both list it as an authorized retailer, and both are labels that sell only through stores like this one rather than direct to shoppers, so the gown you find in their online catalogs has to be bought through an authorized shop. Its Facebook page marks the price range as $$. That is the only pricing information the shop has made public.
Appointment-only changes how you plan
You cannot do this one as a stop on a Saturday errand run, and you cannot bring six friends on a whim. Call or book first, and expect the room to yourself for the length of the appointment. Because the visit is scheduled rather than walk-in, the useful move is to book early in the season — late summer into September for homecoming, January and February for a spring prom — when ordering a size still leaves time for delivery and alterations.
Several things the public listings do not settle, and worth asking when you call: how much is on the floor to try versus ordered in, what size range is in the room, and whether alterations are handled in-house or referred out.
Finleyville, and who drives here
Finleyville is small in a way that surprises people who only know the Route 19 corridor. The borough covers about a sixth of a square mile and had 376 residents in 2020. It was incorporated in 1896. Route 88 is the road through it, running south toward Charleroi and north into the Pittsburgh suburbs, with I-79 a short drive west. This corner of southwestern Pennsylvania is the seam between the South Hills and the Mon Valley, and the shop sits right on it.
Local students here are Ringgold kids — Elementary School North is on Finleyville-Elrama Road, with the middle and high schools in Monongahela. Within an easy drive are Peters Township High School in McMurray, Canon-McMillan in Canonsburg, Thomas Jefferson in Jefferson Hills, Bethel Park, and Charleroi Area. For a family in Peters Township or Bethel Park, the trip to Finleyville is a matter of minutes, which is worth knowing before the McMurray address on a designer’s website sends you into a shopping-center parking lot.