Westfield Vancouver

**Westfield Vancouver** is a shopping mall owned by Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, and located in the city of Vancouver, Washington, U.S., which is within the Portland (Oregon) metropolitan area. It is anchored by Gold's Gym, H&M, JCPenney, Macy's, AMC, Hobby Lobby, Round One, and Old Navy. Longtime past anchor stores included Meier & Frank, Sears, Nordstrom and Mervyn's. Opened in 1977, it was known as Vancouver Mall mall from 1977 to 1998.

## History

Vancouver Mall opened in August 1977 with Meier & Frank, Nordstrom and Sears as anchors. During phase two of mall expansion, a JCPenney was added. A Lipman's was also planned, but was not built. Eventually, Mervyns would open where the Lipman's had been planned. A 50-foot oak tree was planted on the southwest side of the property to commemorate the grand opening. This tree still exists to this day.

While the mall is now located within the Vancouver city limits, until 1993 the property was in an unincorporated part of Clark County.

In 1993, the mall added a new food court and underwent a renovation of its interior. The mall was acquired in 1994 by Westfield America, Inc.

In 1998, the mall was renamed "Westfield Shoppingtown Vancouver", at which time the mall had 146 stores using 870,000 square feet (81,000 m2) of space. However, "Shoppingtown" was dropped from the name in September 2005, making it **Westfield Vancouver mall**.

2003 would see a full interior and minor exterior renovations to the Sears store at the mall.

In mid-2005, work was started on a 60,000-square-foot (5,600 m2) expansion to the Meier & Frank store by its then-owner, the May Department Stores Company, adding 30,000 square feet on each of two levels, completed in 2006. Following the acquisition of the May Company by Federated Department Stores, the Meier & Frank store was renamed Macy's in September 2006.

The 82,225-square-foot (7,639.0 m2) Mervyn's closed in January 2007. On June 1, 2012, it was converted to the Cinetopia "Vancouver Mall 23" video movie theater.

In 2009, Westfield looked into expanding the mall. These plans would have demolished the former Mervyn’s and added additional retail space. By this point the mall was 17% vacant. These plans never came into fruition.

In 2011, plans were announced to renovate the shopping center. These renovations included new floors, lighting, exterior entrances, escalators, and new tenants. Renovations were completed in July 2012. Cinetopia opened their new multiplex cinema just a month after renovations were finished.
The mall from the southwest in 2017
In February 2014, it was announced that Nordstrom would be closing its store at the mall. The store closed in January 2015, at which time the mall managers announced that Gold's Gym would move into the upper level and H&M would move into the lower level of the former-Nordstrom space.

In 2015, Sears Holdings spun off 235 of its properties, including the Sears at Westfield Vancouver, into Seritage Growth Properties.

On August 22, 2018, Sears announced that its store would also be closing as part of a plan to close 46 stores nationwide. The store officially closed after 41 years on November 25, 2018  After the store closed, Macy’s, JCPenney, Gold's Gym, Old Navy, Cinetopia, and H&M are the remaining anchors left.

In March 2019 it was announced that Hobby Lobby and Round One Entertainment would move into the vacant Sears space. Construction on the Round One and Hobby Lobby commenced in September 2019 with an estimated opening date of August 2020. This date was pushed back to September 2020 due to COVID-19 pandemic related construction delays. Hobby Lobby opened its doors on September 11, 2020. Round One intends to open the new Vancouver store late 2020.

Also in March 2019, the Vancouver Mall general manager, JB Schutte passed away. He was replaced by former Mainplace Mall general manager Tracy Peters.

Shoe Dept. Encore opened a 15,000 square foot store in April 2019.

On May 23, 2019, AMC Theaters purchased the Cinetopia theater chain. All Cinetopia locations including the Vancouver Mall theater were rebranded under AMC.

In June 2019, Chick-fil-A and Five Guys announced plans to open in a freestanding building in the malls southwest parking lot. Five Guys opened on September 9, 2020, with Chick-Fil-A announcing a November 2020 opening date.

In March 2020, Tillys began construction on a location at the Vancouver Mall with an unknown grand opening date.