Somersville Towne Center is a regional

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

Antioch, California Antioch is the third-largest city in Contra Costa County, California, United States. Located in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area along the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta. The city's population was 115,291 at the 2020 cen ...

. Previously named County East Mall until 2004, the mall is managed by Urban Retail Properties. Originally opened in 1966, it is strategically positioned in one of the fastest growing areas of the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...

, east Contra Costa County. Along with high population growth, east Contra Costa County is also experiencing sizable household income increases. Somersville Towne Center is the only enclosed regional shopping mall in east Contra Costa County and also the first such mall in the southeast portion of Antioch. The next closest shopping center of similar size and scale is The Streets of Brentwood open-air shopping center in nearby Brentwood, which opened in 2008. The mall is anchored by 24 Hour Fitness and

Smart & Final Smart & Final is a chain of warehouse-style food and supply stores based in Commerce, California, which developed through a series of mergers and expansions. The oldest of the combined companies, Hellman-Haas Grocery, was founded in 1871 in Los ...

History

County East Mall was opened in 1966 as an open-air shopping center with

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 ...

Mervyns Mervyn's was an American middle-scale department store chain based in Hayward, California, and founded by Mervin G. Morris (1920–2021). It carried national brands of clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, jewelry, beauty products, electronics, ...

, and

W. T. Grant W. T. Grant or Grants was a United States-based chain of mass-merchandise stores founded by William Thomas Grant that operated from 1906 until 1976. The stores were generally of the variety store format located in downtowns. History In 1906 the ...

as the original anchor tenants.

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), ...

built the center and sold it to Hexalon Real Estate in 1978. In the mid-1970s,

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 ...

replaced Grant's as the center's third anchor. A major overhaul in the late-1980s transformed the center into an enclosed shopping mall with

Gottschalks Gottschalks (former NYSE ticker symbol GOT) was a middle-tier American department store that operated 58 department stores and three specialty apparel stores in six western states (California, Washington, Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Nevada); some ...

added as a fourth anchor tenant. JCPenney closed on January 25, 1997, and was occupied for several years by a furniture retailer until the building was gutted in 2003 and replaced by the larger two-story Macy's anchor in 2004. Further expansion brought in a

Michael's Michaels Stores, Inc., more commonly known as Michaels, is a privately held chain of 1,252 American and Canadian arts and crafts stores, as of January 2021. It is one of North America's largest providers of arts, crafts, framing, floral and wall ...

which later became a

Marshalls Marshalls is an American chain of off-price department stores owned by TJX Companies. Marshalls has over 1,000 American stores, including larger stores named Marshalls Mega Store, covering 42 states and Puerto Rico, and 61 stores in Canada. M ...

as a fifth anchor in March 2008. In August 2008, Mervyns announced it would close several underperforming stores, including the Somersville Towne Center location, which closed in December of that year. Gottschalks closed due to bankruptcy in 2009, leaving two anchors vacant at the mall. In late 2012, it was announced that a

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park was slated to take a portion of the former Gottschalks. In December 2016, half of the former Gottschalks building became a 24 Hour Fitness Super Sport club; the other half of the building remains vacant. In 2013, Factory 2-U opened a Fallas Paredes store in the former Mervyns location and became an anchor tenant. A year later, the mall was sold by Macerich to Time Equities, with

Spinoso Real Estate Group Spinoso is a town and ''comune'' in the province of Potenza, in the Southern Italian region of Basilicata it, Lucano (man) it, Lucana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demograph ...

as leasing agent. Marshalls closed in 2013 and the space remained vacant until 2015, when

opened up as a replacement tenant. In November 2018,

Hibbett Sports Hibbett Sports, Inc. is an American publicly traded holding company for Hibbett Sporting Goods, a full line sporting goods retailer headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama. As of January 29, 2022, the company operated approximately 1,096 retail st ...

opened up in the mall, replacing the spaces that Hot Topic & Zumiez occupied which closed in 2013 & 2018, respectively. On August 6, 2019, it was announced that Sears would be closing the Somersville Town Center location in October 2019 as part of a plan to close 26 stores nationwide. On January 8, 2020, it was announced that

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 ...

would be closing in April 2020 as part of a plan to close 125 stores nationwide. After

closed,

Fallas The Falles ( ca-valencia, Falles; es, Fallas) is a traditional celebration held annually in commemoration of Saint Joseph in the city of Valencia, Spain. The five main days celebrated are from 15 to 19 March, while the Mascletà, a pyrotechnic ...

closed in August 2022 and the space is now vacant. As of September 2022, 24 Hour Fitness, and

are the only anchor stores left.

Renovations

In 1989, County East Mall was converted from an open-air shopping center to an enclosed shopping mall. The mall's most recent renovation was in 2004, which included the name change to Somersville Towne Center along with the opening of the Macy's anchor tenant in a new two-story building, and a cosmetic makeover of the mall's interior. The new construction and makeover, which included new paint, new landscaping, new flooring, and improvements to the mall's entrances, cost a reported US$20 million.

References

External links

Somersville Towne Center website
{{Shopping malls in California Shopping malls in the San Francisco Bay Area Antioch, California Shopping malls in Contra Costa County, California Shopping malls established in 1966