Chico Marketplace (formerly Chico Mall) 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 ...

Chico, California Chico ( ; Spanish language, Spanish for "little") is the most populous city in Butte County, California, United States. Located in the Sacramento Valley region of Northern California, the city had a population of 101,475 in the 2020 United Sta ...

, United States. Opened in 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 ...

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 ...

and At Home as its

anchor store In North American, Australian and New Zealand retail, an "anchor tenant", sometimes called an "anchor store", "draw tenant", or "key tenant", is a considerably larger tenant in a shopping mall, often a department store or retail chain. They are ...

s, with Burlington,

HomeGoods HomeGoods is a chain of home furnishing stores headquartered in Framingham, Massachusetts Framingham () is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts, United States. Incorporated in 1700, it is located in Midd ...

Petco Petco Health and Wellness Company, Inc. is an American Pet store, pet retailer with corporate offices in San Diego and San Antonio. Petco sells pet food, products, and services, as well as certain types of live small animals. Founded in 1965 as ...

, Boot Barn and Planet Fitness as junior anchors.

History

Chico Marketplace originally opened in 1988 as Chico Mall. Its original anchor stores were Troutman's Emporium,

Gottschalks Gottschalks (former NYSE ticker symbol GOT) was a middle-tier American department store that operated 58 department stores and three specialty apparel stores in six western states (California, Washington, Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Nevada); some ...

Longs Drugs Longs Drugs is an American chain owned by parent company CVS Health with approximately 70 drugstores throughout the state of Hawaii and formerly in the Continental US. Before being acquired by parent company CVS Health in 2008, it was a chain of ...

, and

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 ...

. Longs Drugs was soon converted to a

store, which moved from North Valley Plaza, a former competing shopping mall that has since converted into a conventional shopping center. As a result, Longs moved its store to nearby

Paradise In religion and folklore, paradise is a place of everlasting happiness, delight, and bliss. Paradisiacal notions are often laden with pastoral imagery, and may be cosmogonical, eschatological, or both, often contrasted with the miseries of human ...

. Upon opening, the mall had over 95 stores and cost more than $4 million to build. Following the bankruptcy and closing of the Troutman's store, it was converted to

in 2012. Prior to this addition, original mall expansion plans instead called for demolishing the former Troutman's building, then home to a local furniture store, in favor of a new

lifestyle center A lifestyle center (American English), or lifestyle centre (Commonwealth English), is an open-air shopping center which aims to create a "pedestrian-friendly, town-like atmosphere with sidewalks, landscaping, ambient lighting, and park benches. ...

wing. After Gottschalks went out of business, its space became a

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 ...

store in 2009, which closed in 2020 as part of a plan to close 111 stores nationwide. Sears, the last remaining original anchor store, announced on June 6, 2017, that it would close the Chico Mall store in September 2017 as part of a plan to close 72 stores nationwide. On May 13, 2020, Chico Mall was renamed to its current moniker as part of its reopening from the

COVID-19 lockdown During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of non-pharmaceutical interventions, particularly lockdowns (encompassing stay-at-home orders, curfews, quarantines, and similar societal restrictions), were implemented in numero ...

that shuttered the mall in March 2020. Along with the reopening was the addition of Planet Fitness, which opened on July 28, 2020, replacing the mall's

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 ...

, and H&M, which opened on September 24, 2020. In 2021, Burlington,

and

all opened throughout the year in the anchor building that formerly housed Gottschalks and Forever 21.

Western wear Western wear is a category of men's and women's clothing which derives its unique style from the clothes worn in the 19th century Wild West. It ranges from accurate historical reproductions of American frontier clothing, to the stylized garments ...

retailer Boot Barn filled the remaining spot in 2023. On February 8, 2023, home furnishings retailer At Home opened in the former Sears. On June 16, 2025, it was announced that At Home would be closing by September, as part of a plan to close 26 stores nationwide.

References

External links

Official website
{{Shopping malls in California Shopping malls in California Shopping malls established in 1988 Tourist attractions in Chico, California