Chula Vista Center is an outdoor

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 ...

Chula Vista, California Chula Vista ( ; , ) is a city in San Diego County, California, United States. It is the second-most populous city in the San Diego metropolitan area, the Largest cities in Southern California, seventh-most populous city in Southern California ...

. Opened in 1962, it features Burlington,

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 ...

, and

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 ...

, with one vacant anchor last occupied by

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 ...

. It is owned and managed by

Brookfield Properties Brookfield Properties is a North American subsidiary of Commercial property, commercial real estate firm Brookfield Property Partners, which itself is a subsidiary of Alternative investment, alternative asset management company Brookfield Corpor ...

History

Construction started in 1961 on the new shopping center designed by Charles Luckman & Associates and built by Del E. Webb Corporation. Chula Vista Center opened in 1962 as "one of the country's earliest regional malls". One of its original anchor stores was

Marston's Carlsberg Britvic is a British subsidiary of Carlsberg Group, created in January 2025 by the merger of Carlsberg's UK business (including the former Marston's plc breweries) and Britvic, acquired by Carlsberg Group in 2024. History In 2020, ...

, which was later bought out by The Broadway, who also developed the mall. The mall was expanded in 1987 to include The Broadway (now

, and

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 ...

. Homart Development Co. redeveloped the center which included the closing of a street for expanding the square footage. Chula Vista Center was the first outdoor center in their portfolio of shopping centers. Mervyn's closed in 2008 and became

Burlington Coat Factory Burlington, formerly known as Burlington Coat Factory, is an American national off-price department store retailer, and a division of Burlington Coat Factory Warehouse Corporation with more than 1,100 stores in 47 states and Puerto Rico, with it ...

in 2012. In 2015,

Sears Holdings Sears Holdings Corporation was an American holding company headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. It was the parent company of the chain stores Kmart and Sears and was founded after the former purchased the latter in 2005. It was the 20th-l ...

spun off 235 of its properties, including the Sears at Chula Vista Center, into Seritage Growth Properties. On November 7, 2019, it was announced that Sears would be closing this location a part of a plan to close 96 stores nationwide. The store closed in February 2020.

References

External links

Official website
{{Shopping malls in California Buildings and structures in Chula Vista, California Brookfield Properties Shopping malls in San Diego County, California Shopping malls established in 1962 1962 establishments in California