Marina Pacifica is a

marina A marina (from Spanish , Portuguese and Italian : ''marina'', "coast" or "shore") is a dock or basin with moorings and supplies for yachts and small boats. A marina differs from a port in that a marina does not handle large passenger ships o ...

-adjacent shopping mall featuring movie theaters, shopping, dining & copious parking. It is in southeastern

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 ...

between Second Street and the Los Cerritos Channel. The shopping center has variously been named Marina Pacifica Mall and Marina Pacifica Shopping Center. Original construction of the shopping center in 1972-3 was a $10 million project of the Robert Tebbe and Southern California Financial corporations on 143 acres of land, an old oil tank farm and several capped oil wells, providing of gross leasable area for retail, a cinema and offices, oriented to the adjacent marina. The concept was one of a "Mediterranean spa", and peach, oleander and other trees were planted. There was a bridge to an adjacent residential complex. Long Beach-based

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, ...

department store moved in as an anchor in 1976, building a two-story, store designed by Associated Architects and Planners of Los Angeles, and moving its Marina branch from a smaller adjacent location. At the time, the new Buffum's formed part of a 108-store, six-restaurant center. A 21,000-square-foot

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 ...

multicinema was added in 1984. By 1990, the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

'' characterized Marina Pacifica as an example of "the wrong way to build a mall", a "graveyard", with the staircases too hard to find, lack of a way between shops without traversing the parking lot, vacant storefronts, and a lack of attention. At the time, it was envisioned that Triple Five Joshi Development Co., partner of the Triple Five conglomerate that built the

West Edmonton Mall West Edmonton Mall (WEM) is a shopping mall in Edmonton, Alberta, that is owned, managed, and operated by Triple Five Group. It is the second most visited mall in Canada, after the Toronto Eaton Centre in Toronto, followed by Metrotown Mall in B ...

, the world's largest at the time, would buy the Marina Pacifica Mall. Buffum's closed all its branches including Marina Pacifica in 1990. In May 2020 it was announced Pier 1 would close all locations, including the Marinia Pacifica location. It was closed by August 2020.

Tower Records Tower Records is an international retail franchise and online music store that was formerly based in Sacramento, California, United States. From 1960 until 2006, Tower operated retail stores in the United States, which closed when Tower Records ...

closed in 2007 and was replaced by

Best Buy Best Buy Co. Inc. is an American multinational consumer electronics retailer headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota. Originally founded by Richard M. Schulze and James Wheeler in 1966 as an audio specialty store called Sound of Music, it was rebra ...

in 2008, which closed in October 2018. Current tenants include

Nordstrom Rack Nordstrom Rack is an American off-price department store chain founded in 1973. It is a sister brand to the luxury department store chain Nordstrom. As of 2021, Nordstrom Rack operates 352 stores in 41 U.S. states and three Canadian provinces ...

Barnes & Noble Barnes & Noble Booksellers is an American bookseller. It is a Fortune 1000 company and the bookseller with the largest number of retail outlets in the United States. As of July 7, 2020, the company operates 614 retail stores across all 50 U. ...

, Sit 'n Sleep, and a

Ralphs Ralphs is an American supermarket chain in Southern California. The largest subsidiary of Cincinnati-based Kroger, it is the oldest such chain west of the Mississippi River. Kroger also operates stores under the Food 4 Less and Foods Co. names ...

supermarket. The property is currently being redeveloped and managed by NewMark Merrill Companies.NewMark Merrill Companies
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References

External links

*
NewMark Merrill Corporate Website
{{coord, 33.7607, -118.1150, type:landmark_globe:earth_region:US-CA, display=title Shopping malls in the South Bay, Los Angeles Buildings and structures in Long Beach, California 1973 establishments in California Mixed-use developments in California Neighborhoods in Long Beach, California