Hawthorne Plaza is a

dead mall A dead mall (also known as a ghost mall, zombie mall, or abandoned mall) is a shopping mall with a high vacancy rate or a low consumer traffic level, or that is deteriorating in some manner. Many malls in North America are considered "dead ...

along Hawthorne Boulevard between 120th Street and El Segundo Boulevard in Hawthorne, California.

History

Opening

Hawthorne Plaza was part of the Hawthorne Plaza Redevelopment Project, approved in 1969, which called for the redevelopment of a plot of land. Ground was broken for the mall in January 1974 and most of the mall's 134 stores opened in February 1977. It included an indoor mall with three anchor stores -

Montgomery Ward Montgomery Ward is the name of two successive U.S. retail corporations. The original Montgomery Ward & Co. was a world-pioneering mail-order business and later also a leading department store chain that operated between 1872 and 2001. The curren ...

The Broadway The Broadway was a mid-level department store chain headquartered in Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1896 by English-born Arthur Letts Sr., and named after what was once the city's main shopping street, the Broadway became a dominant reta ...

, and

J.C. Penney 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, Girl ...

and freestanding stores at the property's south end. The mall largely catered to the middle-class residents living in and around Hawthorne and featured cheaper stores than other nearby malls such as South Bay Galleria and Manhattan Village.

Decline

Despite initial popularity, the mall's early years were marred by two shootings in 1979. The mall went further into decline in the 1980s and 1990s, due in part to the economic decline of the area after the cutbacks in aerospace jobs,

white flight White flight or white exodus is the sudden or gradual large-scale migration of white people from areas becoming more racially or ethnoculturally diverse. Starting in the 1950s and 1960s, the terms became popular in the United States. They refer ...

, and to competition from other shopping centers. In 1992 the Mall was heavily looted and damaged during the

1992 Los Angeles Riots The 1992 Los Angeles riots, sometimes called the 1992 Los Angeles uprising and the Los Angeles Race Riots, were a series of riots and civil disturbances that occurred in Los Angeles County, California, in April and May 1992. Unrest began in S ...

, but sales stayed consistent following the unrest briefly until the end of the decade. The mall's number of occupied stores declined from 130 in the late 1980s to 87 in 1994 and around 70 in 1998. After the

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 ...

Clearance Center (which replaced

upon the latter's purchase by

Federated Department Stores Macy's, Inc. (originally Federated Department Stores, Inc.) is an American conglomerate holding company. Upon its establishment, Federated held ownership of the regional department store chains Abraham & Straus, Lazarus, Filene's, and Shillito ...

) closed in December 1997, plans were announced to put in an

AMC Theatre 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 fo ...

on the site and convert the mall into an open-air shopping center, but the renovations failed to materialize. The mall's final anchor,

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 ...

, closed in 1998 and the mall itself closed in 1999. The southern section of the mall across from the parking structure was demolished in 1998 and rebuilt as a strip mall. It currently includes a supermarket, a pharmacy, and some small restaurants. The mall building and most of its multistory parking lots are now abandoned except for a police training center that was built in the portion formerly occupied by

. Most of the interior was gutted sometime around the mid 2000s. On the northern side is an annex administrative office for the Hawthorne School District. The southern parking structure and adjacent parking lot connected to the mall are being used to store Tesla vehicles. Sometime between 2019 and 2020, most of the signage and labelscars of the former stores on Hawthorne Boulevard were either removed or painted over, most notably the removal of

sign. Many of the entrance signs were also removed, and the labelscar on the JCPenney building was painted over. On January 26, 2022, the mall was heavily damaged by arson in connection to a makeshift homeless encampment. The entrance to the former Broadway building and the central entrance were both severely damaged following the fire. The abandoned mall has also been used to film numerous movies, TV shows, and music videos such as ''

Evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

'' (2001), ''

Minority Report Minority Report may refer to: * Minority report (Poor Law), published by the UK Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress 1905–09 * "Minority Report", a 1949 science fiction short story by Theodore Sturgeon * "The Minority Report ...

'' (2002), ''

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'' (2006), '' The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift'' (2006),

Teen Wolf ''Teen Wolf'' is a 1985 American coming-of-age romantic fantasy comedy film directed by Rod Daniel and written by Jeph Loeb and Matthew Weisman. Michael J. Fox stars as the title character, a high school student whose ordinary life is changed ...

(2011), '' Agents of Shield'' (2013),

Beyoncé Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter ( ; born September 4, 1981) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. Beyoncé's boundary-pushing artistry and vocals have made her the most influential female musician of the 21st century, according to ...

's "

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" (2013), '' Gone Girl'' (2014), Lindsey Sterling's "

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" (2014),

David Guetta Pierre David Guetta ( , ; born 7 November 1967) is a French DJ and music producer. He has over 10 million album and 65 million single sales globally, with more than 10 billion streams. In 2011, 2020 and 2021, Guetta was voted the number one D ...

's " Bang My Head" (2014), ''

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'' (2016),

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(2016), '' Westworld'' (2016),

Taylor Swift Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989) is an American singer-songwriter. Her discography spans multiple genres, and her vivid songwriting—often inspired by her personal life—has received critical praise and wide media coverage. Bor ...

's " ...Ready for It?" (2017),

Chris Brown Christopher Maurice Brown (born May 5, 1989) is an American singer, songwriter, dancer, and actor. According to '' Billboard'', Brown is one of the most successful R&B singers of his generation, having often been referred to by many contempo ...

's "

Party A party is a gathering of people who have been invited by a host for the purposes of socializing, conversation, recreation, or as part of a festival or other commemoration or celebration of a special occasion. A party will often feature f ...

" (2017), Travis Scott's '' Astroworld'' trailer (2018), Drake's "Nice For What" (2018),

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' "

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" (2020), and ''

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'' (2020).

Potential redevelopment plans

Numerous redevelopment plans for the abandoned mall have been proposed, plans to redevelop the mall started since 1998, however, none of the proposals have came to fruition. On November 21, 2014,

ABC News ABC News is the news division of the American broadcast network ABC. Its flagship program is the daily evening newscast ''ABC World News Tonight, ABC World News Tonight with David Muir''; other programs include Breakfast television, morning ...

announced that Hawthorne Plaza would be revitalized as an outlet mall. In February 2016, it was announced that Hawthorne Plaza would be revitalized as a large "power center", which could include an outdoor mini-mall, an office complex and walkable outdoor retail strips with upper-level homes. A month later, on March 10, 2016, the Hawthorne Specific Plan, which included the revitalization of the ailing mall, was approved by the city council. The plan also called for 500 high-end housing units, innovative office units, commercial outlets open to Hawthorne Blvd, and outdoor dining sites. Property owner Charles Co. never began construction. On November 29, 2016, the Hawthorne City Hall commission announced plans to demolish Hawthorne Plaza and build something similar to the

Farmers Market A farmers' market (or farmers market according to the AP stylebook, also farmer's market in the Cambridge Dictionary) is a physical retail marketplace intended to sell foods directly by farmers to consumers. Farmers' markets may be indoors or ...

in Los Angeles. As of 2021 the future developments have been put on an indefinite hold. On December 15, 2022, mall owner Arman Gabaee was sentenced to four years in prison for bribing a Los Angeles County official in a scheme to sign a lucrative tenancy agreement for the abandoned mall.url=https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-12-15/beverly-hills-developer-sentenced-bribery-los-angeles-county , title=Beverly Hills developer gets 4 years in prison for bribing L.A. County official - Los Angeles Times File:Thom McAn.jpg, Vestiges of the mall's past—the scar of a former Thom McAn shop

References

External links

Hawthorne Mall image gallery (archived)
{{Shopping malls in California Abandoned shopping malls in the United States Shopping malls in the South Bay, Los Angeles Hawthorne, California Shopping malls established in 1977 Shopping malls disestablished in 1999 1999 disestablishments in California