Torrance Promenade, formerly Old Towne, is a shopping mall in

Torrance, California Torrance is a city in the Los Angeles metropolitan area located in Los Angeles County, California, Los Angeles County, California, United States. The city is part of what is known as the South Bay (Los Angeles County), South Bay region of the m ...

, United States. The original Old Towne mall built in 1972 featured a mix of shopping, amusement and entertainment. The property was converted to a strip mall in 1989 and renamed Torrance Promenade.

History

The mall was built in 1972 by Lincoln Realty Old Town, a partnership of Mik Brindle, Clifford A. Hemmerling, and Southern California Financial Corp. Jenkins & Greist were the mall's architects. Old Towne was built with space for up to 140 tenants along a brick-lined central concourse, with Kmart as the sole

anchor store In retail, an "anchor tenant", sometimes called an "anchor store", "draw tenant", or "key tenant", is a considerably larger tenant in a shopping mall, often a department store or retail chain. They are typically located at the ends of malls. Wit ...

. Features of the mall included an antique carousel, a movie theater, a gazebo for live performances, and balconies from which entertainers such as jazz bands and

barbershop quartet A barbershop quartet is a group of four singers who sing music in the barbershop style, characterized by four-part harmony without instrumental accompaniment, or a cappella. The four voices are: the lead, the vocal part which typically carries t ...

s could perform. One section of the mall was called "Artisan's Way", and was dedicated to crafters, silversmiths, and glass blowers. The mall could not effectively compete with nearby Del Amo Fashion Center and the South Bay Galleria. By 1982, the owners remodeled the mall for $3.8 million remodel and added two big box anchors, Marshalls and

Dayton Hudson Target Corporation (doing business as Target and stylized in all lowercase since 2018) is an American big box department store chain headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is the seventh largest retailer in the United States, and a compo ...

’s then-new clothing store Plums, which opened in September 1983. The name was changed to Old Town Place. The Federated Group electronics store closed in 1989; the electronics and appliance store Silo replaced it but went out of business in 1995.

Conversion to power center

By 1989 the mall was roughly a third vacant and the city approved its conversion to an outdoor power center format by its then-owners, BPT Torrance Associates. Only the carousel remained from the earlier attractions after the 1990 remodel. In 1994, the carousel was moved to the

Eastwood Mall Eastwood Mall is an indoor shopping center in Niles, Ohio, United States, serving the Youngstown–Warren metropolitan area. It is owned by the Cafaro Company. Its anchor stores are Boscov's, Dillard's, JCPenney, Macy's, and Target. The mall con ...

Niles, Ohio Niles is a city in southern Trumbull County, Ohio, United States, situated at the confluence of the Mahoning River and Mosquito Creek. The city's population was 18,443 at the 2020 census. It is a suburb of the Youngstown–Warren metropolitan a ...

. The center was renamed first Torrance Citiplex, then Torrance Promenade.

Trader Joe’s Trader may refer to: * Merchant, retailer or one who attempts to generally buy wholesale and sell later at a profit * The owner of a trading post, where manufactured goods were exchanged with native peoples for furs and hides. * Trader (finance), ...

was added in November 2002. As of 2020, Torrance Promenade is owned by

Kimco Realty Kimco Realty® (NYSE:KIM) is a real estate investment trust (REIT) headquartered in Jericho, N.Y. that is North America’s largest publicly traded owner and operator of open-air, grocery-anchored shopping centers, including mixed-use assets. The ...

, featuring

Walmart Neighborhood Market Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquarter ...

, Ross Dress for Less,

Burlington Burlington may refer to: Places Canada Geography * Burlington, Newfoundland and Labrador * Burlington, Nova Scotia * Burlington, Ontario, the most populous city with the name "Burlington" * Burlington, Prince Edward Island * Burlington Bay, no ...

, and Marshalls among its tenants.

References

{{Shopping malls in California Shopping malls in the South Bay, Los Angeles Buildings and structures in Torrance, California Shopping malls established in 1972