The Ala Moana Center, commonly known simply as Ala Moana, is a large open-air

shopping mall A shopping mall (or simply mall) is a North American term for a large indoor shopping center, usually anchored by department stores. The term "mall" originally meant a pedestrian promenade with shops along it (that is, the term was used to refe ...

in the

Ala Moana Ala Moana (meaning ''path to the sea'' in Hawaiian) is a commercial, retail, and residential district of Honolulu, Hawaii. It is located between Waikiki and Moiliili to the east, and Kakaako and Honolulu Harbor to the west. King Street, to th ...

neighborhood of

Honolulu, Hawaii Honolulu (; ) is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, which is in the Pacific Ocean. It is an unincorporated county seat of the consolidated City and County of Honolulu, situated along the southeast coast of the island o ...

. Owned by

Brookfield Properties Brookfield Properties is a North American subsidiary of commercial real estate company Brookfield Property Partners, which itself is a subsidiary of alternative asset management company Brookfield Asset Management. It is responsible for the pro ...

, Ala Moana is the eleventh largest shopping mall in the United States and the largest open-air shopping center in the world. Ala Moana is consistently ranked among the most successful malls in the world. With assets totaling $5.74 billion as of January 2018, it is the most valuable shopping mall in the United States. It is anchored by

Bloomingdale's Bloomingdale's Inc. is an American luxury department store chain; it was founded in New York City by Joseph B. Bloomingdale, Joseph B. and Lyman G. Bloomingdale in 1861. A third brother, Emanuel Watson Bloomingdale, was also involved in the bus ...

Macy's Macy's (originally R. H. Macy & Co.) is an American chain of high-end department stores founded in 1858 by Rowland Hussey Macy. It became a division of the Cincinnati-based Federated Department Stores in 1994, through which it is affiliated wi ...

Marshalls Marshalls is an American chain of off-price department stores owned by TJX Companies. Marshalls has over 1,000 American stores, including larger stores named Marshalls Mega Store, covering 42 states and Puerto Rico, and 61 stores in Canada. Mar ...

Neiman Marcus Neiman Marcus Group, Inc. is an American integrated luxury retailer headquartered in Dallas, Texas, which owns Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, Horchow, and Last Call. Since September 2021, NMG has been owned by a group of investment compani ...

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

Ross Dress for Less Ross Stores, Inc., operating under the brand name Ross Dress for Less, is an American chain of discount department stores headquartered in Dublin, California. It is the largest off-price retailer in the U.S.; as of 2018, Ross operates 1,483 sto ...

Saks Off 5th Saks can refer to: *Saks (surname) *Saks, Alabama, a community in the United States *Saks, Inc., holding company of Saks Fifth Avenue *Saks Fifth Avenue, U.S. luxury department store See also * * *Sachs *Sachse (disambiguation) *Sacks (surname) *Sa ...

, and

Target Target may refer to: Physical items * 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 artillery, fi ...

History

Before the construction of the mall, the land was a wetland. Dredging projects nearby spearheaded by

Walter F. Dillingham Walter Francis Dillingham (April 5, 1875 – October 22, 1963) called the Baron of Hawaii Industry, was an industrialist and businessman from Honolulu, Hawaii. He gained favors from Hawaii politicians to develop urban Honolulu. Biography Dillin ...

created excess coral which filled the wetland, purchased by Dillingham in 1912 from the estate of

Bernice Pauahi Bishop Bernice Pauahi Bishop KGCOK RoK (December 19, 1831 – October 16, 1884), born Bernice Pauahi Pākī, was an '' alii'' (noble) of the Royal Family of the Kingdom of Hawaii and a well known philanthropist. At her death, her estate was the la ...

. Land reclaimed, son and successor Lowell Dillingham initiated the Ala Moana Center project in 1948 and broke ground in 1957.

Initial development and design

The Ala Moana Center was developed and designed by Don Graham. Critics viewed Graham's unusual design, which oriented the mall away from the Pacific Ocean and included two levels for retail and parking, as a potential failure. However, the Ala Moana Center proved a success after its opening, and helped refocus the retail center of Oahu away from

downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business distric ...

Honolulu. Graham worked as the center's first

general manager A general manager (GM) is an executive who has overall responsibility for managing both the revenue and cost elements of a company's income statement, known as profit & loss (P&L) responsibility. A general manager usually oversees most or all of ...

after its opening.

Opening

When it opened in 1959, Ala Moana Center became the largest shopping mall in the United States.

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

currently owns and operates Ala Moana Center. Although later retail developments across the nation have overshadowed it over the years, Brookfield markets and lists Ala Moana Center as the world's largest open-air mall with a total retail space of . Its original tenants included

Sears, Roebuck and Company Sears, Roebuck and Co. ( ), commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began a ...

F. W. Woolworth Company The F. W. Woolworth Company (often referred to as Woolworth's or simply Woolworth) was a retail company and one of the pioneers of the five-and-dime store. It was among the most successful American and international five-and-dime businesses, se ...

, Foodland,

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 in 2008, it was a chain of over 500 s ...

, and

Shirokiya was a chain of department stores and other retail establishments founded in Japan and later located in Honolulu under the ownership of Shirokiya Holdings, LLC, a United States-based corporation. The company's last location closed in 2020. Compan ...

, among other local shops. Ala Moana Center's second-phase expansion included the 1961 addition of the Ala Moana Office Building (including

La Ronde La Ronde may refer to: Geography * La Ronde, Charente-Maritime, a commune in the Charente-Maritime ''département'', France * La Ronde River, on the Caribbean island of Dominica *La Ronde (amusement park), Montreal, Quebec, Canada *A La Ronde, an ...

, the first

revolving restaurant A revolving restaurant or rotating restaurant is usually a tower restaurant eating space designed to rest atop a broad circular revolving platform that operates as a large turntable. The building remains stationary and the diners are carried on ...

in the United States), the 1966 addition of

JCPenney Penney OpCo LLC, doing business as JCPenney and often abbreviated JCP, is a midscale American department store chain operating 667 stores across 49 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. Departments inside JCPenney stores include Mens, Womens, Boys, Gir ...

and Liberty House in a new Diamond Head wing. In 1982, Ala Moana Center was purchased by a partnership of Japanese corporation,

Daiei , based in Kobe, is one of the largest supermarket chains in Japan. In 1957, Isao Nakauchi founded the chain in Osaka near Sembayashi Station on the Keihan train line. Daiei is now under a restructuring process supported by Marubeni Corporation ...

, and an insurance company. In 1995, Daiei became the sole owner. Once a management vendor for Daiei, General Growth Properties purchased Ala Moana Center in 1999.

Success and expansion

The Makai Market food court was built in 1987. A 1999 expansion added the Makai wing, with

as a new anchor. A shopping complex and parking spaces were demolished just north of the mall in 2006 to make way for the Mauka wing, which was completed on March 7, 2008, and was anchored by

. In a June 26, 2009, report from '' U.S. News & World Report'', Ala Moana was ranked as the second most profitable mall in America based on sales per square footage, and also had one of the highest occupancy rates, at 95%. The report described the flourishing mall as a gold mine, with annual sales of more than $1 billion.

Departure of Sears

On February 23, 2012,

Sears Holdings Corporation 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 ...

announced it would close its store at Ala Moana Center by early 2013. Sears held its original location and had a presence at the mall since its opening in 1959. The closing was part of a $270 million sale of 11 Sears properties nationwide. ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'' estimated that the Ala Moana Sears location was the largest portion of the deal, comprising between $200 million to $250 million of the overall sale price. The Ala Moana location closed permanently at 7 PM on June 2, 2013.

Ewa Wing expansion

On May 17, 2013, the owner of Ala Moana Center announced that

would anchor and occupy of a new and expanded Ewa wing. The expanded wing opened on November 12, 2015, replacing the existing wing on the western end of the mall, including the space previously occupied by Sears. The new wing included Bloomingdale's and Nordstrom, which relocated from the north end of the mall, as anchors. On October 22, 2017,

held its grand opening for its first store at a mall in Hawaii in the space formerly occupied by Nordstrom.

Architecture and layout

Costing US$25 million in 1959, Ala Moana Center had eighty-seven stores and four thousand parking spaces. Ala Moana Center was remodeled extensively in various phases. New designs reflected modern Hawaiian architectural principles, emphasizing the importance of the symbolism of various natural phenomena found in Hawaii. Asian

Pacific Rim The Pacific Rim comprises the lands around the rim of the Pacific Ocean. The ''Pacific Basin'' includes the Pacific Rim and the islands in the Pacific Ocean. The Pacific Rim roughly overlaps with the geologic Pacific Ring of Fire. List of co ...

motifs have been adopted reflecting the large Asian population of residents in Hawaii. For decades, a centerpiece of Ala Moana Center was its koi ponds. In the

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

culture, koi represents happiness and tranquility. Despite these enhancements, the design of the center has been criticized for its over-built appearance and hodge-podge architecture, the result of years of modifications and expansions under different owners. Still, Ala Moana Center architecture and layouts inspired its owner in 2004 to invest over US$1 billion in remodeling various other shopping centers across Canada and the United States, using Ala Moana Center as a template. As of 2018, Ala Moana is valued at nearly $6 billion and is the largest outdoor mall in the world. Ala Moana Centerstage is one of the most popular public amphitheaters in Hawaii. On a stage in the center of the shopping complex, local talents are showcased for visitors to enjoy. Hula dances are a staple for Ala Moana Centerstage as well as performances by the

Royal Hawaiian Band The Royal Hawaiian Band is the oldest and only full-time municipal band in the United States. At present a body of the City & County of Honolulu, the Royal Hawaiian Band has been entertaining Honolulu residents and visitors since its inception i ...

, the oldest municipal band in the United States. Schools throughout the country, as well as the world, travel to Honolulu just to be able to perform at Ala Moana Centerstage. In addition, episodes of the local TV show ''Hawaii Stars'', a singing competition, are usually filmed on this stage. Onlookers can usually be seen crowding the second- and third-story balconies overlooking the stage during taping.

References

External links

* {{Brookfield Properties 1959 establishments in Hawaii Buildings and structures in Honolulu Brookfield Properties Shopping malls established in 1959 Shopping malls in Hawaii Tourist attractions in Honolulu