Mayfield Mall

Mayfield Mall was a shopping mall in Mountain View, California, that operated from the 1960s until 1984. It was the first air-conditioned, enclosed shopping mall in Northern California,[2] though it has been an office complex since the 1980s. In 2013, Google rented the entire 500,000 square feet (46,000 m2) property and ultimately purchased it in 2016 for $225 million; it is now known as the company's Building RLS1.[3][4]

Mayfield Mall
LocationMountain View and Palo Alto, California, United States
Opening dateOctober 5, 1966 (1966-10-05)
Closing dateJanuary 1984 (1984-01)
DeveloperAlbert A. Hoover and Associates; Hare, Brewer and Kelley, Inc.[1]
No. of stores and services24
No. of anchor tenants1
Total retail floor area500,000 sq ft (46,000 m2)[1]

As a mall

Mayfield Mall opened in 1966 and was the first enclosed mall of its type in the region, taking its name from the original town of Mayfield, which was annexed by Palo Alto in 1925.[5]:10 Its original anchor was JCPenney, which closed stores on Castro Street and University Avenue to consolidate into the mall location.[6] At the time, the JCPenney outlet was the chain's largest suburban location.[7] There were 24 original tenants, notably including Joseph Magnin and Woolworth.[1] The mall declared itself the first enclosed and carpeted center in the United States.[8]

The mall did decent business but closed in the face of newer, larger centers such as Valley Fair Mall, Stanford Mall and Vallco Fashion Park. JCPenney announced it would close its branch there in May 1983, sounding an immediate death knell for a small center with no room to grow; after the mall's ownership found no way to lure another anchor tenant, it closed in January 1984.[8] The JCPenney store moved to the San Antonio Shopping Center, where it would last until the mid-1990s.[6] Several outlets, as well as a Greyhound bus terminal, continued to operate.[9]

Office era
South side of the mall in 2013

After the mall's closure, Hewlett-Packard became the mall's only tenant and renovated the structure to serve as offices, adding an atrium and high ceilings. Under HP, the building housed the company's American response center and some 1,600 workers.[10] However, in the early 2000s, HP opted to consolidate into other office spaces, leaving the mall vacant.[11] By 2003, the old mall was on the market after a deal to sell to Stanford Hospital failed over zoning issues.[10] The property was bought by Rockwood Capital and Four Corners Properties for $90 million in 2012, after William Lyons Homes, which had hoped to develop a 260-unit housing complex on the site and demolish the mall, went into bankruptcy. Rockwood and Four Corners instead sought to remodel the site and maintain the office use, renaming the complex San Antonio Station.[11]

In September 2013, Google rented the entire mall in the largest lease deal of the year in Silicon Valley.[2] Google is not the only large tech company to buy and renovate a former mall for office use; the headquarters of Rackspace are located at the former Windsor Park Mall near San Antonio, Texas.[2] Three years into the lease deal, Google purchased the entire property outright.[4]

See also

References
  1. "Shop Center Is Open On Peninsula". The Times. October 6, 1966. p. 27. Retrieved August 19, 2020.
  2. "Google to Rent Former Mall in Largest Silicon Valley Deal". Bloomberg. 2013-09-11. Retrieved 2015-10-01.
  3. Newton, Casey (2015-10-01). "We took Google's self-driving car prototype through an obstacle course at the mall". The Verge. Retrieved 2015-10-04.
  4. "Google buys former mall site in Mountain View". BizJournals. 2016-09-26. Retrieved 2017-03-04.
  5. Page and Turnbull (2014-06-02). "2555 Park Boulevard Historical Resource Evaluation". Retrieved 2015-10-13.
  6. "Malls of the Past", MVNick, archived 2007
  7. "Big Penney At Mayfield". San Francisco Examiner. June 20, 1965. p. 28W. Retrieved August 19, 2020.
  8. Flinn, John (December 15, 1983). "Mayfield Mall in its last days". San Francisco Examiner. p. C1, C2. Retrieved August 19, 2020.
  9. "Hewlett-Packard to lease Mountain View shopping mall". The Press Democrat. December 15, 1983. p. 11D. Retrieved August 19, 2020.
  10. Temple, James (2003-10-24). "H-P buildings go on block for $112M". San Francisco Business Times.
  11. DeBolt, Daniel (2012-05-04). "Housing at Mayfield mall site dumped for offices". Mountain View Voice. Retrieved 2015-10-01.

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