Once the place for back to school stores and meeting places on weekends, Orange County shopping centers now exchange their shops almost empty with apartments and entertainment centers.
The MainPlace shopping center in Santa Ana is an example of transformation which, according to experts, shopping centers are underway. In recent years, the shopping center has transformed into a mixed destination for which people buy, dine and even live with other shopping centers that have followed.
On Thursday, the sound of an excavator resonated through what remains of the Orange shopping center. The shopping center closed a year ago and there are only two structures left: the ruined shell of JCPENNEY and an empty Sears.
“Many of our residents have a lot of memories that are wrapped in this incredible property, but unfortunately, with changes in the retail landscape, it has become a destroyed building,” said Aaron Shulze, director of economic development for the city of Orange.
Schulze says what was once a dying shopping center is now a transformation site. The owner, the full communities, plans to redevelop JCPENNEY in a mixed use space.
“Our plan is to bring the residents here. We are still working with the city, so it’s a way to follow,” said John Stanek, director with full communities.
Only 20 miles to the west, the Westminster Mall is strangely silent with most missing stores. The City also envisages the redevelopment and proposals of the owners of the shopping center are being examined
One of the proposals aims to add 3,000 residential units which have just erased the planning commission and are now going to the municipal council. And it’s not only there, the dead and dying shopping centers across the country are redesigned
“Everything, from Chula Vista to Brea via Crenshaw, I mean, you name a location, you can find a redevelopment activity centered on the shopping center,” said Scott Wild, consultation director with John Burns Research and Consulting.
Wild, a real estate consultant, says that shopping centers do not die, they evolve
“There are still experiences that people acquire when they go to the shopping center, it is part of the landscape which, I think, will be here, but parties for mixed use are the way in the future, and I think that is what you should expect in the future,” said Wild.
At the national level, more than 200 shopping centers have added housing on the sites once at home, according to the professor of Georgia Tech, Ellen Dunham-Jones.
“And 200 other proposals, but among these proposals, they will not all be built. And this has to do with funding and uncertainty, especially for construction costs developers,” said Jones, who studies the redevelopment of the shopping center.
Back in Orange, a small crowd watched the demolition teams try to demolish the old shopping center, marking a moment when the past and the future overlap.
“This is the first step in revitalizing this field, which is important for our residents,” said Shulze.
In 2023, MainPlace Mall used part of their parking lot to open an apartments community that they are now working on to transform an old Nordstrom building on the east side of the shopping center into a second apartments and a new food district. The officials say that we can expect them to open in 2028.