Eastridge, officially Eastridge Center, is a shopping mall in

San Jose, California San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popu ...

, located in the

Evergreen In botany, an evergreen is a plant which has foliage that remains green and functional through more than one growing season. This also pertains to plants that retain their foliage only in warm climates, and contrasts with deciduous plants, whic ...

district of

East San Jose East San Jose (abbreviated as ESJ), commonly called The East Side and less commonly as the East Valley, is the eastern region of the city of San Jose, California. The East Side is made up of numerous neighborhoods grouped into two larger distric ...

. Eastridge opened as the largest mall on the West Coast in 1971 and has been redesigned multiple times throughout its history, most recently in 2017.Eastridge - About
/ref> Eastridge serves as an important community hub in Evergreen and the larger East Side, hosting farmers markets, holiday celebrations, and community events. The anchor stores are

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 ...

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 ...

AMC Theatres AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. (d/b/a AMC Theatres, originally an abbreviation for American Multi-Cinema; often referred to simply as AMC and known in some countries as AMC Cinemas or AMC Multi-Cinemas) is an American movie theater chain fou ...

, Round 1 Entertainment, and 24 Hour Fitness.

History

The mall opened on May 17, 1971, with the original anchors of

, Liberty House, J. C. Penney, Joseph Magnin Co., 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 ...

. Eastridge Center was the largest 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 ...

in the

Western United States The Western United States (also called the American West, the Far West, and the West) is the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. As American settlement in the U.S. expanded westward, the meaning of the term ''the We ...

Emporium-Capwell The Emporium, from 1980 to 1995 Emporium-Capwell, was a mid-line department store chain headquartered in San Francisco, California, which operated for 100 years—from 1896 to 1996. The flagship location on San Francisco's Market Street was a de ...

replaced Liberty House when the chain pulled out of California. After Macy's bought Emporium-Capwell, the store was closed. It sat vacant until the 2005 remodel when it was demolished. In 1993, the Spillman Engineering 3 Abroad carousel, made c.1920 by

Allan Herschell Company The Allan Herschell Company specialized in the creation of amusement rides, particularly carousels and roller coasters. The company manufactured portable machines that could be used by traveling carnival operators. It was started in 1915 in the ...

was restored and placed in the mall. The carousel has been listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

since 2000. In February 2012, two teenage boys were stabbed and left in critical condition at the mall, which led to J. C. Penney and Macy's closing temporarily. In the wake of the 2012 Aurora, Colorado shooting, a mysterious package was thrown into an AMC theater at Eastridge during a showing of ''

The Dark Knight Rises ''The Dark Knight Rises'' is a 2012 superhero film directed by Christopher Nolan, who co-wrote the screenplay with his brother Jonathan Nolan, and the story with David S. Goyer. The film is based on the DC Comics character Batman, it is th ...

'', which led to an evacuation of the theater. On July 20, 2012, a fire broke out near the mall at a homeless encampment in a 100-by-100 ft area, but was extinguished before the fire could reach any buildings. On January 15, 2016, a joint adventure between Pacific Retail Capital Partners and Silverpeak Real Estate Partners acquired the mall from GGP for $225 million, excluding the Sears and Macy's stores. The new owners announced that they will invest approximately $15 million to upgrade the mall. In March 2017, a renovation of the mall was announced. In December 2017, it was announced that Barnes & Noble would close its store in the mall in January 2018. On November 7, 2019, it was announced that Sears would be closing this location as part of a plan to close 96 stores nationwide. The store closed on February 2, 2020. In 2017, Eastridge underwent its most recent and largest renovation. As part of the renovation, the Eastridge Murals were painted.

Eastridge Murals

As part of the major renovation of Eastridge in 2017, the four Eastridge Murals were commissioned, which constitute the world's largest murals on a shopping center. The four murals cover a total of 20,000 square feet of artwork and carried out by four different artists: Aaron de la Cruz, Brendan Monroe, CYRCLE, and Lila Gemellos.Pacific Retail - Eastridge Redevelopment Mural Project
/ref> File:Eastridge Murals (Aaron de la Cruz) 0901 (cropped).jpg, Mural by Aaron de la Cruz File:Eastridge Murals (CYRCLE) 0907 (cropped).jpg, Mural by CYRCLE File:Eastridge Murals (Lila Gemellos) 0912 (cropped).jpg, Mural by Lila Gemellos File:Eastridge Murals (Lila Gemellos) 0913 (cropped).jpg, Mural by Lila Gemellos

Location

Eastridge is located in the

district of

. It is bound on the east by the Capitol Expressway. Nearby landmarks include

Lake Cunningham __NOTOC__ Lake Cunningham is an artificial lake in Lake Cunningham Park, in East San Jose, California, near the Eastridge Mall and Eastridge Transit Center. It is not a geological feature recognized in the Geographic Names Information System (GN ...

and Raging Waters San Jose. Reid-Hillview Airport is located north of Eastridge, across Tully Road.

Transportation

The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) operates the

Eastridge Transit Center The Eastridge Transit Center is a Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) bus terminal located at the Eastridge Mall in the Evergreen District of San Jose, California. The station is located alongside Capitol Expressway near Tully Roa ...

on the northeast edge of the mall along Capitol Expressway.

Popular culture

A scene from Robert Redford's '' The Candidate'' (1972) was filmed at Eastridge.

San Jose Mercury News ''The Mercury News'' (formerly ''San Jose Mercury News'', often locally known as ''The Merc'') is a morning daily newspaper published in San Jose, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is published by the Bay Area News Group, a subsidia ...

Five Things You Didn't Know About Eastridge
/ref> Several scenes of Logan's Run (1976) were filmed at Eastridge.

References

External links

Eastridge Center official site
{{Shopping malls in California Economy of San Jose, California Shopping malls in the San Francisco Bay Area Shopping malls in Santa Clara County, California Shopping malls established in 1971