Fiesta Mall

Fiesta Mall is a regional shopping center in the U.S. city of Mesa, Arizona (part of the Phoenix metropolitan area). Fiesta Mall is located west of Alma School Road, between Southern Avenue and the US 60 (Superstition) freeway.

History

Fiesta Mall was originally developed by the Homart Development Company, which at the time of the opening of Fiesta Mall in 1979 was the real estate division of Sears, Roebuck and Company and was engaged in development of several shopping centers nationwide, anchored by Sears retail locations. In 1995, Homart Development Company and its mall properties were sold to General Growth Properties. Fiesta Mall was acquired by Macerich in 2004 for $135 million.^[3]

Fiesta Mall

Fiesta Mall opened with four anchor department stores, Goldwaters (which became Robinsons-May in 1989 and changed to Macy's in 2006. It was announced on January 8, 2014 that the store would be closed in the spring of 2014. Diamond's (now Dillard's), The Broadway (which became Macy's in 1996, and closed in 2006 with the location knocked down for a Best Buy and Dick's Sporting Goods, and Sears. It was one of the first major malls to be built in Mesa, which has traditionally been one of the nation's fastest growing areas. There are 116 stores in the mall with a total area of 9,226,325 sq ft (857,153.6 m²).^[4]

Fiesta's opening hastened the decline of Mesa's Main Street shopping corridor (although it has rebounded slightly since the 1990s with an emphasis on locally owned boutiques and related shops). Fiesta Mall itself has seen some decline as since its opening many other regional malls have opened in the area, including the 1990 opening of Superstition Springs Center in east Mesa, the 1997 opening of Arizona Mills (located in Tempe), the 2001 opening of Chandler Fashion Center, and the 2007 openings of Mesa Riverview and Tempe Marketplace. Fiesta Mall underwent a renovation in 2000 in part to try to reverse the trend.^[5]

The demographics around Fiesta Mall have changed as the west Mesa area has become less upscale and more blue-collar in nature (as new development in Mesa favors the eastern portions of the city), which hurt sales in Fiesta's more upscale stores.

In May 2007, plans were announced to demolish the vacant Macy's location. The structure has been replaced by a new two-level building that has two separate 50,000-square-foot (4,600 m²) tenants, one on each level. The tenants were Best Buy and Dick's Sporting Goods (the Dick's location shut down in January 2016 and is now vacant). Demolition began in November 2007 and new tenants are currently in place.^[6] A new retail location has also been created with frontage on Alma School Road for an In-N-Out Burger location and a Dutch Bros. Coffee location.

In November 2013, Macerich turned over Fiesta Mall to its lenders to avoid foreclosure.^[7]

In November 2016, Fiesta Mall announced that it would be going "Pet Friendly". According to their spokesperson, Henry Wonsey III, they were trying to "attract customers in nearly any way than can". There will be new clean up stations located throughout the mall to help keep the pet mess in check. According to Wonsey the management would like to "encourage our four legged friends to accompany their paying customer guardians". Fully socialized and friendly pets only are allowed and only for patrons that buy something during their visit. They will also post signs in English and Spanish advising patrons of the rules.

Neighborhood

Several strip malls, office complexes (including the Bank of America building on the southeast corner of Alma School and Southern, 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), 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. Several prominent national retailers had stores in these strip malls, but after the 2008 housing market crash, many of the stores shut down, leaving literally 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 at least 2005, and will likely never reopen as a Bennigan's after that restaurant chain's Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing in July 2008 (Bennigan's has since rebranded under new ownership, and as of 2013 is slowly rebuilding as a national chain). 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 has been taking steps to revitalize the neighborhood, utilizing some of the expertise of the Arizona State University architecture and urban planning program. The area has been 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. New wider sidewalks, landscaping, curbs, benches, bus stops, street lights, pedestrian lights, trash cans, bike racks and traffic signals were installed, with most of the work complete as of September 2016. 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.

Some of Fiesta Mall is scheduled to be redeveloped as office space, and 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.^{[8] [9]}

Anchors & Majors

• Dillard's (195,395 sq ft.) Outlet store selling new old stock
• Macy's (154,728 sq ft.) Closing announced on Jan 8th 2014
• Sears (168,068 sq ft.)
• Best Buy Closed as of October 29, 2016
• Dick's Sporting Goods Closed as of January 2016

References

External links

• Official website