Stanford Shopping Center is an upscale open air

shopping mall A shopping mall (or simply mall) is a North American term for a large indoor shopping center, usually Anchor tenant, anchored by department stores. The term "mall" originally meant pedestrian zone, a pedestrian promenade with shops along it (that ...

located on Route 82 ( El Camino Real) at

Sand Hill Road Sand Hill Road, often shortened to just "Sand Hill" or "SHR", is an arterial road in western Silicon Valley, California, running through Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and Woodside, notable for its concentration of venture capital companies. The road ...

Palo Alto, California Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was es ...

. It is on the campus of

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

although the university only owns the land and not the actual buildings or stores. Also, unlike the rest of the campus, the shopping center and the neighboring

Stanford University Medical Center Stanford University Medical Center is a medical complex which includes Stanford Health Care and Stanford Children's Health. It is consistently ranked as one of the best hospitals in the United States and serves as a teaching hospital for the S ...

are part of the city of Palo Alto, not the census-designated place (CDP) of

Stanford, California Stanford is a census-designated place (CDP) in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States. It is the home of Stanford University. The population was 21,150 at the 2020 census. Stanford is an unincorporated area of ...

. The shopping center buildings are 94.4% owned by

Simon Property Group Simon Property Group, Inc. is an American real estate investment trust that invests in shopping malls, outlet centers, and community/ lifestyle centers. It is the largest owner of shopping malls in the United States and is headquartered in In ...

, which manages the property and leases the land from the university. The outdoor center is and includes four major

department stores A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store made a dramatic appea ...

Bloomingdale's Bloomingdale's Inc. is an American luxury department store chain; it was founded in New York City by Joseph B. and Lyman G. Bloomingdale in 1861. A third brother, Emanuel Watson Bloomingdale, was also involved in the business. It became a di ...

Macy's Macy's (originally R. H. Macy & Co.) is an American chain of high-end department stores founded in 1858 by Rowland Hussey Macy. It became a division of the Cincinnati-based Federated Department Stores in 1994, through which it is affiliated wi ...

Neiman Marcus Neiman Marcus Group, Inc. is an American integrated luxury retailer headquartered in Dallas, Texas, which owns Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, Horchow, and Last Call. Since September 2021, NMG has been owned by a group of investment compani ...

, and

Nordstrom Nordstrom, Inc. () is an American luxury department store chain headquartered in Seattle, Washington, and founded by John W. Nordstrom and Carl F. Wallin in 1901. The original Wallin & Nordstrom store operated exclusively as a shoe store, and ...

. Retailers at the shopping center include

Louis Vuitton Louis Vuitton Malletier, commonly known as Louis Vuitton (, ), is a French high-end Luxury goods, luxury fashion house and company founded in 1854 by Louis Vuitton (designer), Louis Vuitton. The label's LV monogram appears on most of its produc ...

, Tiffany & Co.,

Burberry Burberry is a British luxury fashion house established in 1856 by Thomas Burberry headquartered in London, England. It currently designs and distributes ready to wear, including trench coats (for which it is most famous), leather accessorie ...

Ermenegildo Zegna Ermenegildo Zegna (; born 30 September 1955), often simply known and referred to as Gildo Zegna, is an Italian entrepreneur and manager. He is Chairman and CEO of Ermenegildo Zegna Group. Early life and education Gildo is a grandson of Ermeneg ...

, and

Frette Frette is an Italian textile company known for its linens. It was established in 1860 in Grenoble, France but relocated to Concorezzo, Italy in 1865. It is currently headquartered in Monza, Italy. It has 9 retail locations in the United Stat ...

, as well as the first

Victoria's Secret Victoria's Secret is an American lingerie, clothing, and beauty retailer known for high visibility marketing and branding, starting with a popular catalog and followed by an annual fashion show with supermodels dubbed Angels. As the largest ...

retail store.5 Things You Didn't Know: Victoria's Secret
By Ross Bonander - Entertainment Correspondent, AskMen.com - accessed January 12, 2008

History

In 1954, excavators broke ground on what was once Leland Stanford's vineyards. Nine buildings housing 45 businesses were built. The Roos Brothers clothing store opened as the first retailer in September 1955 and Blum's restaurant opened on October 22, 1956, marking the completion of the center. Board of trustees Chair Lloyd Dinkelspiel and university President J. E. Wallace Sterling presided at the opening and Shirley Temple Black cut the first slice of a nine-tiered cake.

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

department store The Emporium and luxury specialty department store I. Magnin & Co. were the original anchors. The center opened with great success and became one of the largest sources of unrestricted income for the university. Macy's California joined the center in 1961 and

Saks Fifth Avenue Saks Fifth Avenue (originally Saks & Company; colloquially Saks) is an American luxury department store chain headquartered in New York City and founded by Andrew Saks. The original store opened in the F Street shopping district of Washingt ...

opened a store in 1962. Further expansion came again in 1972 with the addition of

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world ...

-based

Bullock's Bullock's was a chain of full-line department stores from 1907 through 1995, headquartered in Los Angeles, growing to operate across California, Arizona and Nevada. Bullock's also operated as many as seven more upscale Bullocks Wilshire special ...

, owned by

parent company

Federated Department Stores Macy's, Inc. (originally Federated Department Stores, Inc.) is an American conglomerate holding company. Upon its establishment, Federated held ownership of the regional department store chains Abraham & Straus, Lazarus, Filene's, and Shillito ...

. Bullock's only lasted 11 years, closing its northern California stores in 1983 and selling its Stanford location to

, which opened in November 1984.

became the sixth anchor in August 1985. A department store shuffle occurred in the mid-1990s: *Saks Fifth Avenue closed in 1994. *I. Magnin was rebranded as a Macy's Men's store in 1995. *The Emporium store was shuttered and rebranded as Bloomingdale's in November 1996. In 1997, the vacant Saks Fifth Avenue building was split into two tenants:

Crate & Barrel Euromarket Designs Inc., doing business as Crate & Barrel (stylized as Crate&Barrel), is an international furniture and home décor retail store headquartered in Northbrook, Illinois. They employ 8200 employees across over 100 stores in the Uni ...

and an

Andronico's Safeway is an American supermarket chain founded by Marion Barton Skaggs in April 1915 in American Falls, Idaho. The chain provides grocery items, food and general merchandise and features a variety of specialty departments, such as bakery, del ...

gourmet market. Andronico's closed in 2011, and was replaced by The Container Store in 2013. On March 18, 2020, Stanford was among 7 Bay-area malls owned by the

which closed until March 29, 2020 due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

Later years

Throughout the years, the center has continued to evolve in terms of both tenants and construction and was managed by the university through its investment affiliate Stanford Management Company since 1991. However, in 2003, taking advantage of the high prices that shopping centers were fetching, the university's

board of trustees A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit org ...

agreed to sell the center for $333 million to

which, in turn, leases the underlying land from the university under a 51-year

lease A lease is a contractual arrangement calling for the user (referred to as the ''lessee'') to pay the owner (referred to as the ''lessor'') for the use of an asset. Property, buildings and vehicles are common assets that are leased. Industrial ...

. The university's lease includes an annual rent equal to 25% percent of the center's net profits. In 2012, Bloomingdale's announced plans to move into a new three-level 120,000 square foot store, vacating its existing building. The new Bloomingdale's opened in 2014, and the original building was demolished to make way for a new wing of retailers. That new wing, anchored by a multi-level

Anthropologie Anthropologie is an American clothing retailer with approximately 200 stores across the U.S., Canada, and the UK that offers an assortment of clothing, jewelry, home furniture, decoration, beauty products, and gifts. Anthropologie is part of ...

store and a True Food Kitchen restaurant, opened in mid-2016. In early 2019, Simon Property Group submitted plans to the city of Palo Alto to tear down the former Macy's Men's building and replace it with a 40,000 square-foot, three-level RH gallery with a rooftop restaurant, a duo of smaller restaurant buildings, and a new, larger 29,000 square-foot Wilkes Bashford store. The project was approved in late 2019, with demolition commencing in 2021 and continuing into 2021.

References

External links

Stanford Shopping Center at Palo Alto History.Com
{{Shopping malls in California Shopping malls in Santa Clara County, California Buildings and structures in Palo Alto, California Simon Property Group Shopping malls in the San Francisco Bay Area Shopping malls established in 1955 1955 establishments in California Stanford University