Indian Hill Village is a former

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 ...

Pomona, California Pomona is a city in Los Angeles County, California. Pomona is located in the Pomona Valley, between the Inland Empire and the San Gabriel Valley. At the 2020 census, the city's population was 151,713. The main campus of California State Polyte ...

. It has been redeveloped into a multi-use retail, commercial and educational facility and is now known as The Village @ Indian Hill, comprising on .

History

The original, open-air mall was built in the mid-1950s as Pomona Valley Center. Its anchor store, a

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 ...

, had been dedicated in November 1954. Inline stores included Long's Drugs,

F.C. Nash Nash's (F. C. Nash & Co.) was a Pasadena, California-based department store which grew into a small chain. Nash's was founded in 1889 by Hammond G. Nash, who developed his grocery on Colorado Street into a full department store. He continued to ope ...

and

J.J. Newberry J. J. Newberry's was an American five and dime store chain in the 20th century. It was founded in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, United States, in 1911 by John Josiah Newberry (1877–1954). J. J. Newberry learned the variety store business by working ...

. Between 1967 and 1969, the mall was expanded westward. A

Zody's Hartfield-Zodys was an American retail corporation begun in 1960. It operated the Hartfield chain of women's ready-to-wear apparel in the Los Angeles area, and starting in 1960, the Zodys chain of discount retail stores (1960–1986), which oper ...

discount store opened in June 1969, as the center's second anchor. One year later, the F.C. Nash store was sold to

Roberts Department Store Robert's was a department store based in Long Beach, California. The chain began when Morris Burman opened the first store in East Los Angeles, California, East Los Angeles. In 1950, Burman bought an existing store in North Long Beach at 5350 Lon ...

. In 1974, the mall was renamed to Indian Hill Village, a name chosen by the mall owners in a contest. An enclosing renovation was completed in September 1982. The project was described as "the largest single commercial development in the city's history". In 1985, Sears moved to the

Montclair Plaza Montclair Place is a indoor shopping mall in Montclair, California. The mall is anchored by JCPenney and Macy's. The mall was known as Montclair Plaza until 2015. History At opening The mall opened on November 5, 1968, at a cost of $50 million ...

Mall. In 1995, part of the property was acquired by the

Pomona Unified School District Pomona Unified School District or PUSD serves approximately 30,000 Pre-K-12 students and 17,000 adult learners at 44 schools in Pomona and Diamond Bar, California. It is located 30 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, and is the third-largest scho ...

, which created the nonprofit Pomona Valley Educational Foundation to manage it; the foundation was dissolved in 2010. The conversion of the failing mall into an "impressive" educational facility has been cited as one of the chief accomplishments of then-school superintendent Patrick Leier. The expanded property now houses multiple educational facilities which serve more than 2,000 students in grades pre-Kindergarten to 14. An eight-screen movie theater formerly in the mall was closed in September 2005, prompting the theater owner to sue the school district, alleging that the lease had been improperly terminated.

References

{{Pomona, California Defunct shopping malls in the United States Buildings and structures in Pomona, California Education in Los Angeles County, California Shopping malls established in 1955 1955 establishments in California