ANAHEIM : Revamped Shopping Center to Debut Friday
Anaheim Plaza, reincarnated as a $30-million, open-air discount shopping center, will have its grand opening on Friday.
“It’s a real success story,” Anaheim Mayor Tom Daly said Tuesday. “The rebuilding turned out to be a fine project and will be a great convenience to residents.”
The formerly enclosed mall has been transformed into a 50-acre outdoor center with stores linked by covered arbors and walkways. The new commercial center will be anchored by a Wal-Mart store, which is scheduled to open in January. Several other stores quietly opened earlier this month.
“It’s such a different property now,” said Jan Wohlwend, general manager. “It’s spectacular. It’s very exciting to see plans that you have been working so hard on finally come to fruition.”
The new center has 400,000 square feet of retail space and, rather than competing with other area malls, it has been positioned as a “value-oriented” plaza targeting bargain hunters.
“Anaheim Plaza now has its own niche as a popular-priced shopping center giving the choice of strong national retailers,” Wohlwend said. “It also gives the convenience of parking and access to stores.”
The old mall was built in 1955 and was a tremendous success during the 1960s. It was renovated in the early 1970s and continued to draw crowds, but then age and development of more modern malls in surrounding cities caused its popularity to decline.
The closing of a Robinson’s department store in 1987 started a series of defections from the mall and, in the end, there were only a handful of shops remaining.
In 1991, the city approved a redevelopment project by the mall’s owners, the State Teachers Retirement System, which called for the mall’s conversion to a discount center.
Daly said the revitalization of the center “will lead to other successes in the future because it will help to revive the commercial properties near it.”
It is estimated that the rejuvenated Anaheim Plaza will bring about $800,000 each year to city coffers, roughly twice the amount the plaza contributed before the Broadway department store departed in 1992, city officials said.
“It’s a big, big plus for Anaheim,” Councilman Irv Pickler said. “I think the plaza will do very, very well and that people are looking forward to it opening. It is something that is needed.”
Plaza Redux After a year of reconstruction, Anaheim Plaza, one of Orange County’s oldest indoor malls, reopens Friday as an open-air discount shopping center. Some background on the new shopping center: Cost: $30 million Acres: 50 Anchor store: 146,000-square-foot Wal-Mart, which opens in January. Retailers: Mervyn’s, Ross Dress For Less, Pay Less ShoeSource, Old Navy Clothing Company, among others. Jobs: 1,000 full- or part-time.
