Anchorage 5th Avenue Mall fills a downtown block at 320 W. 5th Avenue in Anchorage, Alaska. It's a shopping center stacked several floors high, with JCPenney attached on its west side.
The mall opened in 1987 as the Fifth Avenue Mall, in the middle of Anchorage's oil bust. So only about 10 of its planned 110 stores were open, and more than half the space sat empty.
It filled slowly. By 1996 the whole complex was 26 percent vacant, while Anchorage's major shopping centers as a group sat at 13 percent. National chains filled much of it in the years after.
Today it's called Anchorage 5th Avenue Mall, and Simon Property Group runs it. The mall is still open 39 years after that empty start, with its food court still on the fourth floor.
JCPenney and the 1964 earthquake
JCPenney's store at 5th Avenue and D Street was five stories tall and about a year old when the earthquake hit Anchorage on March 27, 1964.
The foundation twisted under the building and broke structural walls throughout it. The store could not be saved and was demolished.
JCPenney stayed downtown anyway. It rebuilt in the same retail district, and by August 1970 it had a parking garage there as well.
The streets around it still held a run of separate buildings: Dicy's Alaska Tailor Shop, Jonas Brothers, First Federal Savings and Loan, and the small Reeve Building at 6th and D. That same year, Northern Commercial Company opened a new store at 5th and D.
In 1975 Nordstrom bought Northern Commercial's stores in Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Kenai.
Downtown now had two department stores around 6th and D, JCPenney and Nordstrom, each in a building of its own.
A garage to keep two stores downtown
By the early 1980s, suburban growth and new commercial building were threatening downtown Anchorage's stores. The city's answer was parking.
The new garage at 5th Avenue and C Street gave downtown two department stores to build around: JCPenney and Nordstrom stayed, and a mall could link them.
The garage had about 1,200 spaces and cost about $27 million.
The mall itself, developed by JCPenney and The Rainier Fund, cost about $67 million, so the parking alone ran to about 40 percent of the mall's price.
Building the mall also meant giving up a street.
The block of D Street running through the site was vacated and turned into the mall's interior walkway, which is why the building has a north-south route through it that lines up with the old grid.
Two stores that had stood in separate buildings along a public street were now planned as one connected complex.
The small Reeve Building stayed. Its historic value kept it in place, so the mall had to fit around it.
The Reeve Building still sits on its own parcel.
The Fifth Avenue Mall opens in 1987
The Fifth Avenue Mall opened on August 1, 1987, at 320 W. 5th Avenue in Anchorage, Alaska, as a four-level downtown shopping center.
It's now called Anchorage 5th Avenue Mall, and Simon Property Group runs it.
The new building connected straight into JCPenney, and skybridges ran from it to Nordstrom and to the new garage.
Over the northeast corner of the fourth-floor food court, a round skylight brought daylight into the mall and the floors below.
Inside there was tile, stainless steel, and neon. Outside, the walls were rose-colored brick, with large grids of small panes high above the sidewalk.
Many only looked like windows. The real display windows were down at street level under canopies.
The mall opened into Anchorage's oil bust. The boom had collapsed, and jobs and real estate were both under strain.
Of a planned 110 stores, about 10 were open, and more than half of the mall's roughly 250,000 square feet sat empty.
Filling the empty storefronts
The empty space lasted for years after opening day.
By April 1994, the mall had a new owner, and the new owner was going after national specialty chains to fill it.
By February 1996, the whole Fifth Avenue Mall complex was 25.9 percent vacant.
Anchorage's major shopping centers as a group were at 12.9 percent. The downtown mall still had twice their share of empty space.
National specialty stores kept taking the space that had sat empty in the early years.
Northwestern Simon, a Simon Property Group company, owned the mall by the mid-2000s and still owns it.
Alaska's first Apple store, 2011
The line on August 13, 2011, ran about 100 yards through the mall, past several storefronts and elevators.
The mall had started letting people in at about 6 a.m., four hours before Apple opened its first company-owned store in Alaska.
The store let in about 200 people at a time, and roughly 1,000 had come through by 11 a.m.
Apple's store went into the space Eddie Bauer had held, and Eddie Bauer moved down to a lower level.
The mall that had opened with about 10 stores in 1987 now had the first Apple store in the state.
Nordstrom closes after 44 years
Nordstrom closed its downtown Anchorage store at 5 p.m. on September 13, 2019, and workers took the Nordstrom lettering off the top of the building's south-facing wall that same day.
The store had carried the Nordstrom name for 44 years, 12 years longer than the mall it was connected to had existed.
The empty building, still tied into the mall, was now the largest vacant retail building in the complex.
That building sat on land separate from the mall.
Three of the five parcels under it belonged to JCPenney, while the Municipality of Anchorage and a private family trust held one each.
JCPenney went through bankruptcy, and in October 2020 the Anchorage Community Development Authority agreed with JCPenney and its bankruptcy trustees to buy JCPenney's share of the Nordstrom site for $1.5 million and the JCPenney garage for $1.7 million.
The JCPenney store itself stayed open.
Anchorage 5th Avenue Mall and the fifth lot
On March 24, 2026, the Anchorage Assembly transferred four municipal lots under the former Nordstrom building to the development authority for redevelopment.
If redevelopment didn't begin within five years, the lots would go back to the city.
That left the authority holding four of the building's five lots, about 80 percent of the land.
The fifth lot belonged to a private owner. The authority's board authorized talks for it in May, but by July it had not acquired the lot.
On July 21, the authority asked Alaska Superior Court to order all five lots sold and the money divided among the owners, on the grounds that the building and land couldn't be split into separate usable pieces.
No ruling had been made public by late September.
The lawsuit covers the Nordstrom land alone.
Next door, the mall keeps its usual hours, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday.
JCPenney is still attached on the west side.
Apple is on Level 2, Sullivan's Steakhouse, in the mall since at least 2005, is on Level 1, and the food court is still on the fourth floor.
Across 6th Avenue, the Nordstrom building is still empty.
On this side of the street, the mall that opened in 1987 with about 10 of its 110 stores now has local shops like Alaska Cake Studio and Once In A Blue Moose trading next to Sephora and Apple.
Independent Publisher Notice
BestAttractions is an independent editorial publisher. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of any location, business, property owner, manager, government agency, or organization described in this article.
Comments posted on this page are not forwarded to, reviewed by, or acted upon by any entity mentioned in the article.
For official inquiries, complaints, applications, bookings, or other requests, please contact the relevant entity directly through its official website or other verified channels.