Anaheim Plaza

Anaheim Plaza, originally Broadway Orange County Center, then Anaheim Center, in Anaheim, California, was the first shopping mall in Orange County. It was a regional mall from 1955 to 1993 and is now a power center anchored by big-box stores.

Anaheim Plaza

Location in northern Orange County

The Broadway was the original anchor department store opening October 14, 1955,[2] with the mall shops opening gradually in the following weeks and months. Both The Broadway and the center as a whole were designed by renowned Los Angeles architect Welton Becket.[3] The store cost $8.5 million to build, was 208,000 square feet (19,300 m²) in size, employed around 1,000 people and had parking for 5,000 cars. Brown McPherson was the first store manager[4]

In February 1963, a J.W. Robinson's was added as the mall's second anchor store.

In 1974, the center's owner, Prudential Life Insurance Co., completed a $4 million renovation, including enclosing the center and renaming it Anaheim Plaza.[5][6] In July 1977, a Mervyn's was added as the mall's third anchor store.

By the 1980s, better-off patrons had moved out of the surrounding area for Anaheim Hills and southern Orange County and the area were becoming more working-class and Hispanic.[5] In September 1987, business at Anaheim Plaza started to decline which was caused by the grand opening of MainPlace Mall in nearby Santa Ana, California. Robinson's opened a store at MainPlace Mall also in September 1987 and closed its Anaheim Plaza store in January 1988. By 1992, the mall was only 35% occupied. In January 1993, the mall's original anchor store The Broadway closed for good and in August of that same year, the mall was bulldozed except for the Mervyn's store.[7]

A new strip mall, all new except for the Mervyn's, was opened in November 1994, 547,000 square feet (50,800 m²) in size and costing $30 million. Mervyn's closed in late 2008 due to the chain being liquidated and has been replaced by Forever 21 (now closed since 2020, now Burlington). [7]

Currently (as of 2023), anchor stores include El Super (formerly OSH and Gigante), Smart & Final (formerly OfficeMax), Petco, Ross, TJ Maxx (formerly CompUSA), Walmart (which opened in January 1995), and Burlington Coat Factory (former Mervyn's and Forever 21).[8]