Arrowhead Towne Center is the enclosed regional mall at 7700 West Arrowhead Towne Center in Glendale, Arizona. Locals call it Arrowhead Mall.
Westcor opened it in October 1993 with Dillard's, JCPenney, Mervyn's, Robinsons-May, and Montgomery Ward. Three of those five names are gone.
Sears took over the Ward building in 2002 and closed in July 2019. Forever 21 held the Mervyn's box until early 2020.
Round1 opened in that box in December 2023. At the end of 2025, 99.6 percent of the mall and freestanding space was leased.
The orange grove that got zoned for a mall
Before any of it existed, the site in northern Glendale was farmland, and part of it was an orange grove.
On December 12, 1989, Glendale adopted the North Valley Specific Area Plan, covering two square miles bounded by Union Hills Drive, 67th Avenue, Skunk Creek, and New River.
Peoria adopted its matching version four weeks later.
The plan set aside 95.9 acres for what it called a Regional Center and required at least four full-line department stores on the parcel.
Westcor took the project, with General Growth Properties in the ownership partnership. Site work was due to start in April 1992.
The mall was drawn at 1.3 million square feet, slightly smaller than Metrocenter, and the forecast attached 7,000 construction and retail jobs to it.
Bell Road was already the big east-west commercial strip out there. The stretch of Loop 101 beside the site hadn't opened yet.
Arrowhead Towne Center opened in October 1993
Five department stores opened with it: Dillard's, JCPenney, Mervyn's, Robinsons-May, and Montgomery Ward. The plan had asked for four.
A sixth anchor pad was left empty on purpose, held for a tenant who hadn't turned up yet.
The building went up as a two-level enclosed mall of roughly 1.13 million square feet, department stores set around the outside, small shops strung along the concourses between them, parking fields on every side.
Its official name is Arrowhead Towne Center. In everyday use around Glendale it's Arrowhead Mall.
Omniplan Architects of Dallas designed it and The Weitz Company built it.
In its opening year it won an International Council of Shopping Centers design award.
Ward went under, Sears took the building
Montgomery Ward went into bankruptcy and liquidation, and in 2001 Sears bought a group of its former locations, Arrowhead among them.
Sears opened in the Ward building in 2002.
Robinsons-May changed names without anyone touching the building.
Federated Department Stores bought May Department Stores in 2005, and on July 2, 2006 the Arrowhead store entered the Macy's system.
The mall changed hands in the middle of all that.
Macerich acquired Westcor on July 26, 2002, a $1.475 billion deal that included taking on $733 million of existing debt, and picked up a 33.3 percent interest in Arrowhead as part of it.
The sixth anchor pad finally got a tenant
Apple opened in July 2008.
That fall, DICK'S Sporting Goods opened a 70,000-square-foot store on the anchor pad that had been sitting empty since 1993, which gave the mall another large anchor without costing it a department store.
Then Mervyn's liquidated. Its two-level building went dark the same year DICK'S arrived.
Forever 21 moved into the Mervyn's box and opened a large-format store there in March 2009.
Between the two moves, the mall came out of 2009 with one more occupied anchor building than it had going into 2008.
A retractable wall and a 17-foot screen
The renovation started in spring 2015 and finished before the holiday season. Center court got a 17-foot digital LED display and a living wall.
The food court got a retractable wall that opens the indoor seating onto an outdoor amphitheater.
Outside, the crews added shade, seating, a children's play area, and a splash area.
Inside came new lighting, repainted ceilings, charging points, and free Wi-Fi. AMC's 14 screens already had reclining seats.
The community room got its own update afterward: 1,000 square feet, a kitchenette, patio access, and space for 100 people.
Another 22 stores were new or renovated in the same stretch. A 25,000-square-foot H&M followed in 2016.
At the end of June 2015, the mall was 96.5 percent occupied and its tenants were selling $710 per square foot.
Macerich had bought its way to full ownership on October 26, 2012, paying $144.4 million for the final third, then sold 40 percent to Singapore's sovereign wealth fund on January 6, 2016 for $289.5 million.
Two empty anchors, two different outcomes
On April 23, 2019, news broke that the store and its auto center would close.
The auto center went in late May, the department store in early July, about 17 years after Sears took over Ward's building.
That parcel wasn't quite part of the mall.
In April 2015, Macerich and Sears had put nine freestanding Sears properties, Arrowhead included, into a 50-50 joint venture.
That August, Glendale began looking at what else the surrounding land could hold: offices, apartments, a hotel, structured parking, and entertainment uses.
Nothing got approved.
Forever 21 closed in early 2020, and the old Mervyn's building was empty again.
It came back in 2022 with an 83,114-square-foot lease for Round1 Bowling & Arcade, with the Spo-Cha activity floor above it: batting cages, sport courts, and trampolines.
It opened on December 16, 2023, the first Arizona location to pair the two formats.
What's going into the old Sears at Arrowhead Mall
NewQuest bought the former Sears property in 2023 for nearly $8.9 million and is rebuilding it as Mosaic.
99 Ranch Market takes most of the ground floor.
The floor above is planned as Asia-Pacific food and retail, with Bafang Dumpling and T-Swirl Crepe among the named tenants.
Construction was underway by March 2026, with no opening date published and space still being marketed.
The mall next door is full.
Macerich bought back the 40 percent stake on May 14, 2024, with the center 100 percent leased and tenant sales above $1,100 per square foot, against $710 nine years earlier.
At the end of 2025, 99.6 percent of the mall and freestanding space was leased.
More than 180 businesses trade there now.
Dillard's, JCPenney, and Macy's still anchor it, DICK'S still holds the sixth pad, and Round1 fills the Mervyn's box.
The trade area around it holds 1.7 million people. In June 2026, Gorjana was under construction for a fall opening.
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