Long Beach Plaza was a two-level

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 ...

located in

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 ...

Long Beach, California Long Beach is a city in Los Angeles County, California. It is the 42nd-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 466,742 as of 2020. A charter city, Long Beach is the seventh-most populous city in California. Incorporate ...

. It was designed in the 1970s by

The Hahn Company The Hahn Company, San Diego, California, alternately known as Ernest W. Hahn, Inc., was a major American shopping center owner and developer from the 1950s to the 1980s. Purchased by the Trizec Corp. in 1980 (which then took the name TrizecHahn), ...

and opened in 1982. The eight-block dumbbell-shaped mall was an enclosed structure and included a two-story deck parking structure on both sides. The mall was previously anchored by J. C. Penney,

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 ...

and

Buffums' Buffums, originally written as Buffums' with an apostrophe, was a chain of upscale department stores, headquartered in Long Beach, California. The Buffums chain began in 1904, when two brothers from Illinois, Charles A. and Edwin E. Buffum, ...

(which closed in 1991). Problems with the mall included the fact that the mall structure (which included stores that faced inward) had no connection with the rest of Downtown Long Beach area. The closure of the nearby Naval stations in the 1990s also contributed to the slow demise of the mall. In 1999, the mall was purchased by

DDR Corp. SITE Centers Corp. (formerly DDR Corp. and Developers Diversified Realty, Inc.) is a publicly traded real estate investment trust that invests in shopping centers. Founded in 1965 by Bert Wolstein, the company is headquartered in Beachwood, Ohio ...

, Coventry Real Estate Partners and Prudential Real Estate as a joint venture. In 2000, the mall was demolished except for the parking structure. DDR eventually rebuilt the area and renamed it Long Beach City Place.

References

External links

Aerial view (scroll down to bottom)
accessed 21 August 2006

{{coord, 33.770752, -118.190054, type:landmark_globe:earth_region:US-CA, display=title Demolished shopping malls in the United States Downtown Long Beach Buildings and structures in Long Beach, California Shopping malls in the South Bay, Los Angeles Shopping malls established in 1982 Shopping malls disestablished in 2000 1982 establishments in California 2000 disestablishments in California Demolished buildings and structures in California Buildings and structures demolished in 2000