Bellis Fair is an enclosed

shopping mall A shopping mall (or simply mall) is 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, but in the late 1960s, i ...

Bellingham, Washington Bellingham ( ) is the county seat of Whatcom County, Washington, Whatcom County in the U.S. state of Washington (state), Washington. It lies south of the Canada–United States border, U.S.–Canada border, between Vancouver, British Columbia, ...

, United States. Opened on August 4, 1988, it features

JCPenney Penney OpCo LLC , Trade name, doing business as JCPenney (colloquially Penney's and abbreviated JCP) is an American department store chain store, chain with 649 stores across 49 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. It is managed as part of the Catalys ...

Kohl's Kohl's Corporation (Kohl's is stylized in all caps) is an American department store retail chain store, chain. currently has 1,165 locations, operating stores in every U.S. state except Hawaii. The company was founded by Polish immigrant Maxwe ...

Macy's Macy's is an American department store chain founded in 1858 by Rowland Hussey Macy. The first store was located in Manhattan on Sixth Avenue between 13th and 14th Streets, south of the present-day flagship store at Herald Square on West 34 ...

, Macy's Home Store,

Forever 21 F21 OpCo LLC, trade name, doing business as Forever 21, was a multinational fast-fashion retailer. It was originally founded as Fashion 21 in Highland Park, Los Angeles, Highland Park, Los Angeles in 1984.Forever 21History & Facts, n.d. Retrieved ...

, closing

Dick's Sporting Goods Dick's Sporting Goods, Inc. (stylized in all caps as DICK'S Sporting Goods) is an American chain of sporting goods stores founded in 1948 by Richard "Dick" Stack. It is the largest sporting goods retailer in the United States and is listed ...

, H&M,

Ashley Furniture Ashley Furniture Industries, Inc. is an American home furnishings manufacturer and retailer, headquartered in Arcadia, Wisconsin. The company is owned by father and son team Ron and Todd Wanek. Ashley Furniture manufactures and distributes home ...

, and

Target Target may refer to: Warfare and shooting * Shooting target, used in marksmanship training and various shooting sports ** Bullseye (target), the goal one for which one aims in many of these sports ** Aiming point, in field artille ...

. The mall is located along

Interstate 5 Interstate 5 (I-5) is the main north–south Interstate Highway System, Interstate Highway on the West Coast of the United States, running largely parallel to the Pacific coast of the contiguous U.S. from Mexico to Canada. It travels thro ...

at its interchange with State Route 539 (Guide Meridian Road) north of downtown Bellingham.

History

Bellis Fair opened in August 1988, at the site of a former

USDA The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that aims to meet the needs of commerc ...

Soil Conservation Service Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), formerly known as the Soil Conservation Service (SCS), is an agency of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) that provides technical assistance to farmers and other private landowners and ...

plant-materials center. Plans to build a regional shopping center north of Bellingham were announced in 1980 by the Trillium Corporation, who had acquired for retail and office development. The mall attracted several retailers from downtown Bellingham, including

Sears Sears, Roebuck and Co., commonly known as Sears ( ), is an American chain of department stores and online retailer founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosen ...

Cineplex Odeon Cineplex Odeon is a theatre brand owned by Cineplex Entertainment in Canada, after acquiring the Cineplex Odeon Corporation in 1998. As of 2023, there are 61 Cineplex Odeon locations in Canada. The former corporation was one of North America's ...

and

The Bon Marché The Bon Marché (colloquially The Bon) was an American department store chain founded in 1890 by married couple Edward and Josephine Nordhoff. It was based Seattle, Washington, and served working-class families in the Northwestern United Stat ...

, who had failed to build a mall in downtown Bellingham in the early 1980s.

Mervyn's Mervyn's was an American middle-scale department store chain based in Hayward, California, and founded by Mervin G. Morris (1920–2021). It carried national brands of clothing, footwear, bedding, bath products, furniture, jewelry, beauty product ...

and

also anchored the mall initially, with the latter as part of the first wave of Target stores in the Pacific Northwest. The mall was popular with shoppers from nearby

Vancouver Vancouver is a major city in Western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the cit ...

, Canada in the early 1990s, but sales waned as the Canadian dollar declined in value against the American dollar by 1995. In 1990, a

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

Place Two store was added, having also relocated from downtown Bellingham. The Nordstrom Place Two store was later converted to Nordstrom Rack in 1994, before closing in 1999 and becoming an auxiliary store for The Bon Marché. Also in 1999,

Old Navy Old Navy is an American clothing and accessories retailing company owned by multinational corporation Gap Inc. It has corporate operations in the Mission Bay, San Francisco, Mission Bay neighborhood of San Francisco, California. The largest of t ...

was added. Bellis Fair Mall is the last place

North Carolina North Carolina ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, South Carolina to the south, Georgia (U.S. stat ...

student Leah Roberts was seen in March 2000 before she disappeared. She bought a ticket to watch the movie '' American Beauty'' at the mall and she ate at a café there. Her crashed car was later discovered nearby but no trace of her has ever been found. Both Bon Marché stores became Bon-

in 2003 and Macy's in 2005. After Mervyn's closed its stores in the

Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (PNW; ) is a geographic region in Western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though no official boundary exists, the most common ...

in 2006, many of the locations were sold to

, including the Bellis Fair store. Sears closed in January 2013 and became

Sports Authority Sports Authority, Inc. (formerly The Sports Authority) was an American sports retailer based in Englewood, Colorado. At its peak, Sports Authority operated 463 stores in 45 States and Puerto Rico. The company's website was on the GSI Commer ...

the same year. The cinema closed in 2014, replaced with many restaurants. Portions of the mall were renovated in 2015 including the common area, food court and entryways. Sports Authority closed in 2016 and was replaced with a

in 2017.

opened in the remainder of the former Sears in 2018. In February 2022,

Brookfield Property Partners Brookfield Property Partners L.P. is a limited partnership that owns office buildings and shopping centers/shopping malls, as well as minority limited partner interests in investment funds sponsored by affiliates that invest in other types of comm ...

defaulted on its $77 million loan and the mall was put up for auction. Brookfield's original note on the property had been taken out a decade prior for $93 million when the mall was valued at $145 million. In December 2022, 4th Dimension Properties acquired the mall at auction for $44 million. The developer stated an intent to improve the mall's nearly 80% occupancy rate by attracting nontraditional tenants. A branch of the Bellingham Public Library opened in the mall on April 26, 2023.

References

{{Brookfield Properties Brookfield Properties Shopping malls in Washington (state) Bellingham, Washington Shopping malls established in 1988 1988 establishments in Washington (state)