Fiesta Mall

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. 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.

Fiesta Mall'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).

In 1995, Homart Development Company and its mall properties were sold to General Growth Properties.

Fiesta Mall 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. 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. Fiesta Mall underwent a renovation in 2000 in part to try to reverse the trend.

Fiesta Mall was acquired by Macerich in 2004 for $135 million. In November 2013, Macerich turned over Fiesta Mall to its lenders to avoid foreclosure.

Some of Fiesta Mall is slated to be redeveloped as office space.

In November 2016, Fiesta Mall announced that it would become "Pet Friendly".

Anchors & Majors

Fiesta Mall opened with four anchor department stores, Goldwaters, Diamond's, The Broadway, and Sears. Goldwaters became Robinsons-May in 1989, changed to Macy's in 2006, and closed in the spring of 2014. Diamond's is now a Dillard's Clearance Center, but only on the first level with the second floor being closed. The Broadway became Macy's in 1996, and closed in 2006. The structure was replaced by a new two-level building that had two separate 50,000-square-foot (4,600 m²) tenants, one on each level. The tenants were Best Buy and Dick's Sporting Goods (both stores shut down in 2016 and the locations are now vacant).

Current

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 at least 2005. 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.

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.