Capital Mall is a

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 ...

located in

Olympia, Washington Olympia is the capital city of the U.S. state of Washington. It had a population of 55,605 at the 2020 census, making it the state of Washington's 23rd-most populous city. Olympia is the county seat of Thurston County, and the central city ...

. The anchor stores are

REI Recreational Equipment, Inc., doing business as REI, is an American retail and outdoor recreation services corporation. It was formerly governed, and continues to brand itself, as a consumers' co-operative. REI sells camping gear, hiking, clim ...

, Total Wine & More,

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Best Buy Best Buy Co., Inc. is an American multinational consumer electronics retailer headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota. Originally founded by Richard M. Schulze and James Wheeler in 1966 as an audio specialty store called Sound of Music, it was r ...

, and Century Theatres. The mall was known as Westfield Capital from 1998 to 2013, when it was owned by the

Westfield Group Westfield Group was an Australian shopping centre company that existed from 1960 to 2014, when it split into two independent companies: Scentre Group, which owns and operates the Australian and New Zealand Westfield shopping centre portfolio; ...

. In 2013,

Starwood Capital Group Starwood Capital Group is an investment firm headquartered in Miami Beach, Florida. It is managed by Barry Sternlicht. It was co-founded by Sternlicht and Robert Faith in 1991. In 1993, Faith left Starwood to found Greystar Real Estate Partn ...

purchased the mall and it is now managed by Pacific Retail Capital Partners.

History

The grounds of Capital Mall were originally owned by the Yauger family which sold the land off in parcels, eventually becoming of use for the shopping complex, Capital High School, and Yauger Park. Capital Mall opened on October 5, 1978 and was developed by

The Hahn Company The Hahn Company, also known as Ernest W. Hahn, Inc., was a major American shopping center owner and developer from the 1950s to the 1980s, based in San Diego, California. Purchased by the Trizec Corp. in 1980 (which then took the name TrizecHahn) ...

. A 1978 article in ''The Spokesman-Review'' stated that Capital Mall was an integral factor in development of the city of Olympia. Concurrently with the mall, a number of retail developments and fast-food restaurants were also built around the mall. Construction of the mall required the city of Olympia to spend $3 million on road and traffic improvements, as the mall's development was predicted to more than triple the amount of traffic in the area. The mall began with four anchor department stores: The Bon Marche,

, Frederick and Nelson, and

Lamonts Lamonts was a chain of department stores founded in Seattle, Washington. The chain was started in 1970 when Pay 'n Save renamed its suburban branches of Rhodes, a department store chain the company acquired in 1965. Lamonts remained a division of ...

. J. C. Penney's store cost about $2.7 million to build and was designed by the

Los Angeles, California Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

firm of Burke Nicolais Archuleta. Frederick & Nelson was sold to

Mervyns 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 ...

in 1992. On August 18, 1991, a fire broke out on the mall's roof, causing over $3 million in damage. The mall was acquired in 1998 by Westfield America, Inc., a precursor of the

, which renamed it "Westfield Shoppingtown Capital", dropping the "Shoppingtown" from the name in 2005. Upon acquisition by Westfield, it underwent a $50 million expansion and renovation. One facet of the expansion opened in 2002, when the vacated Lamonts store was replaced by a

and a

food court A food court (in Asia-Pacific also called food hall or hawker centre) is generally an indoor plaza or common area within a facility that is contiguous with the counters of multiple food Vendor, vendors and provides a common area for self-serve di ...

. Mervyns closed its store on December 31, 2006 and the space has since been divided into smaller sections:

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 ...

opened in August 2010,

opened in May 2011, and Total Wine & More opened July 2013. Forever 21 closed permanently in September 2018. In October 2013, Westfield sold a controlling interest in several malls in the United States to Starwood Retail Partners, which included Capital Mall, for $1.6 billion. In October 2016,

opened a new store in the mall. The Timberland Regional Library system opened a branch library in the mall in June 2021 as a pilot project to gauge demand in the western Olympia area. The library includes computers, book holds and returns, a children's area, and Wi-Fi.

References

External links

Capital Mall Official Site
{{Shopping Centers WA Shopping malls in Washington (state) Shopping malls established in 1978 Buildings and structures in Olympia, Washington Tourist attractions in Thurston County, Washington 1977 establishments in Washington (state) Pacific Retail Capital Partners