Chico Marketplace, formerly Chico Mall, is an enclosed

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 ...

Chico, California Chico ( ; Spanish for "little") is the most populous city in Butte County, California. Located in the Sacramento Valley region of Northern California, the city had a population of 101,475 in the 2020 census, reflecting an increase from 86,18 ...

. Opened in 1988, it features J. C. Penney and Dick's Sporting Goods as its anchor stores.

History

The mall opened in 1988. 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 ...

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, and

Sears 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 ...

. Longs Drugs was soon converted to a J. C. Penney store, which moved from North Valley Plaza. As a result, Longs moved its store to

Paradise In religion, paradise is a place of exceptional happiness and delight. Paradisiacal notions are often laden with pastoral imagery, and may be cosmogonical or eschatological or both, often compared to the miseries of human civilization: in parad ...

. 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 Dick's Sporting Goods 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 a shopping center or mixed-used commercial development that combines the traditional retail functions of a shopping mall with leisure amenities oriented toward ...

wing. After Gottschalks went out of business, its space became a Forever 21 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.

References

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