Fiesta Mall was a super-regional shopping center in the U.S. city of Mesa, Arizona (part of the Phoenix metropolitan area). Encompassing approximately 1 million square-feet of retail space, it's was west of Alma School Road, between Southern Avenue and the US 60 (Superstition Freeway).
The mall could be categorized as a dead mall due to its great number of vacant stores.
In May 2017, LNR Properties sold the mall to Dimension Financial & Realty Investments for $6.72 million. A spokesman for Dimension said the firm intended to convert the mall into a health and education campus. The deal does not include the mall's four anchor properties, which are owned by other companies.
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History
Early years
The development that would become Fiesta Mall was announced on October 8, 1970 by officials from the city and Sears, Roebuck and Company. Sears officials said the company would develop the mall, which would include one of their stores, through its subsidiary Homart Development Company. The mall was projected to cost $35 million to $55 million and encompass 1.2 million to 1.4 million square-feet of retail space on 120 acres. It's projected opening was 1973.
Fiesta Mall officially opened Oct. 3, 1979 with Sears, The Broadway and Goldwaters as its first three anchor stores. A fourth anchor, Diamonds, would open later. The mall was developed by Homart, which at the time of the opening of Fiesta Mall was developing several shopping centers nationwide anchored by Sears retail locations.
Fiesta Mall and other large developments in the area such as Desert Samaritan Hospital were facilitated to a great extent by population growth in the southeast Valley and the construction of the Superstition Freeway.
In June 1982, Sears, Roebuck and Co. sold a 50 percent stake in the mall to Grosvenor International. The selling price was not disclosed. Under the deal, Homart remained as the mall's management firm.
Homart announced plans in 1985 to grow the mall by nearly 40 percent from 921,046 to about 1.3 million square feet. Part of the company's $50 million expansion plans included a fifth department store. Homart withdrew plans the following year after several delays due to concerns about traffic and parking from the city and other developers with nearby properties.
Fiesta's owners renovated the mall in 1989, doing away with the orange and brown color scheme of the 1970s and installing skylights.
By the early-1990s, Fiesta Mall was at the zenith of its success. It was the commercial hub of the East Valley and ranked within the top 15 percentile of regional malls in the nation in sales. A survey conducted by The Arizona Republic and The Phoenix Gazette in 1992 identified the mall as the preferred shopping center for most Valley residents and, in 1993, as many as a dozen companies were vying to purchase Fiesta. L&B Real Estate Counsel of Dallas, a commercial real-estate investment firm, bought the mall for $124.3 million in December 1993. Citing continuing robust population growth in the southeast Valley, the owners announced new plans for a major expansion that again included a fifth anchor store.
General Growth Properties Inc. acquired Homart and all of its malls in December 1995. Fiesta's management announced in July 2001 that they were searching for a buyer, but said it had nothing to do with increasing competition from newer malls in the area.
On April 13, 2004, pop music star Avril Lavigne hosted a free concert at Fiesta Mall, drawing about 3,000 people.
Decline
Fiesta Mall started showing early signs of trouble in terms of shrinking customer traffic in the late-1990s. When Arizona Mills Mall opened in the neighboring city of Tempe in 1997, mall officials saw an initial decline in shoppers. Fiesta management said the change was short-lived after initial interest in the new mall peaked. When Chandler Fashion Center opened on Oct. 17, 2001, about eight miles away from Fiesta, the mall suffered its first sustained revenue drop due to a competing mall.
In March 2004, a study commissioned by the city and conducted by The International Economic Development Council and The International Council of Shopping Centers said the mall faced significant obstacles as a future competitor in the local retail market. The study reported decreasing sales and difficulty attracting "top-tier stores" due to increasing competition from newer shopping centers and changing demographics. The study also noted recent increases in crime and gang activity in the immediate area surrounding the mall. Despite the mall's challenges, the study's authors reported that sales per square foot remained "well above the threshold for 'vulnerable malls' of $275 or less, according to the Urban Land Institute." The authors also noted that there were "almost no vacant spaces in the mall."
Fiesta Mall was acquired by Macerich for $135 million in 2004, a time when the center appeared to be showing significant signs of decline.
The period between 2006 and 2008 proved to be pivotal in Fiesta Mall's overall decline. In 2006, the mall lost one of its four anchors following the merger between Macy's and Robinsons-May. The mall's sales continued to dwindle following the economic recession and the opening of Mesa Riverview and Tempe Marketplace in 2007.
During this time, reported crime at and around the mall continued to increase. In 2007, Mesa police reported a jump in gang activity at Fiesta, although mall officials denied there was a rise. Police officials said calls for service increased about 71 percent from 2005 to 2007.
In March 2008, a man stabbed two mall patrons, including one fatally. Authorities said the suspect had links to gangs and had a history of mental health issues.
Police reported a spike in property crimes including car thefts from 2007 to 2008.
In January 2012, police arrested a documented gang member in the beating and attempted robbery of another man near Fiesta Mall. In October 2012, a woman was robbed at gunpoint at the mall.
In March 2013, the mall was appraised at $39.5 million -- a 72 percent decline from its worth in 2004. In September 2013, Macerich turned over Fiesta Mall to its lenders due to "imminent default relating to potential tenancy issues."
Macy's closed in 2014, sparking fears over the mall's possible demise. As of October 2016, only 35 businesses were still operating at the mall, which has more that 100 tenant spaces. As of April 2017, only 23 tenants remained operating inside the mall.
Redevelopment
LNR Properties sold the mall to Dimension Financial & Realty Investments in 2017. Dimension said it planned to spend $30 million to convert the property into a campus focusing on education and healthcare for community colleges and for-profit schools. The deal does not include the mall's four anchor properties, which are owned by other companies.
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Anchors & Majors
Fiesta Mall opened with three anchor department stores -- Goldwaters, The Broadway and Sears. Diamonds opened later as the mall's fourth anchor.
Goldwaters became Robinsons-May. The Broadway became Macy's. Macy's then moved into the Robinsons-May building after the two companies merged in 2006. Macy's closed in the spring of 2014.
The space previously occupied by The Broadway and the mall's first Macy's store hosted a Dick's Sporting Goods and a Best Buy in 2007. Both of those stores closed in 2016.
Diamonds is now a Dillard's Clearance Center.
Current
- Dillard's Clearance Center (195,395 sq ft.)
- Sears (168,068 sq ft.)
Neighborhood
Several strip malls, office complexes, free-standing bank branches, hotels (among them a 260-room Hilton), apartment complexes and power centers are in the immediate surrounding neighborhood, although many of the power centers date from the 1970s and 1980s and are showing signs of age. The Bank of America building on the southeast corner of Alma School and Southern was built in the mid-1980s as the corporate headquarters of Western Savings and Loan, which Bank of America acquired in the wake of the savings and loan crisis of the 1990s, and is Mesa's tallest building at 16 stories. Several prominent national retailers had stores in these strip malls, but after the 2008 housing market crash, many of the stores shut down, leaving thousands of square feet of vacant retail space.
A free-standing Target store is located just west of Fiesta Mall (at the southwest corner of Longmore and Southern), which replaced the now-defunct Montgomery Ward. Immediately west of the Target location is Mesa Community College, the main campus of which extends to Dobson Road (the cross street one mile west of Alma School); west of Dobson, Banner Health's Banner Desert Medical Center/Cardon Children's Medical Center occupies the portion westward to the border with the city of Tempe, at the Tempe Canal.
A branch of the Florida-based Italian dining chain, Olive Garden, and a branch of the California-based casual dining chain Mimi's Cafe are located on Southern Avenue just off the main Fiesta Mall parking lot. An In-N-Out Burger restaurant opened in May 2009 and a Longhorn Steakhouse opened on December 11, 2012 on Alma School Road.
Conversely, a Bennigan's restaurant at the northwest corner of Alma School and Southern, across the street from Fiesta Mall, has sat vacant since 2003. A massive strip mall behind the Bennigan's has also sat vacant for several years, and is surrounded by chain link fencing.
The city of Mesa took steps to revitalize the neighborhood starting in 2009, utilizing some of the expertise of the Arizona State University architecture and urban planning program. The area was rebranded as the "Fiesta District", with about $20 million worth of streetscape improvements being made along Southern between Alma School and the Tempe city limits at the Tempe Canal. Wider sidewalks, landscaping, curbs, benches, bus stops, street lights, pedestrian lights, trash cans, bike racks and traffic signals were installed. Street signs in the area are of a new, different graphic design than the standard signage elsewhere in the city. Southern Avenue has been narrowed to four lanes to accommodate the wider sidewalks. Concurrent with this project, Mesa Community College installed distinctive gateway display signage on its property at the campus entrances along Southern, and also a signature lighted monument sign fronting the Southern and Dobson intersection.
One of the nearby power centers located across the street, at the northwest corner of Southern and Longmore (which previously housed locations for Circuit City, Petco and Bed Bath & Beyond), was redeveloped in 2015 into an office complex called Centrica.
In November 2016, Mesa officials announced their intentions to create a redevelopment area (RDA) in the neighborhood that includes Fiesta Mall. The designation would allow the city to use a Government Property Lease Excise Tax to redevelop the area "south of downtown on each side of Country Club Drive to Southern Avenue, and then west to the city limits."
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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