Metrocenter Mall comes down, and the homes wait
Metrocenter opened in 1973 west of Interstate 17 in northwest Phoenix, Arizona, as an enclosed, air-conditioned mall on two levels with five department stores, among them Sears, Goldwater's, and The Broadway.
At its fullest it held about 175 stores and services. Shoppers came for its ice rink, its cinemas, and its arcade, and in 1989 the mall appeared in the film Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.
Metrocenter was already losing department stores and facing newer competition before the pandemic, and it closed to shoppers on June 30, 2020.
A redevelopment plan announced in December 2021 called for demolition and housing, but the vacant building stayed up until November 18, 2024.
That day crews started on its exterior, beginning with the former Dillard's store.
Light rail had reached the area first.
In January 2024 Valley Metro opened a 1.6-mile extension ending at a new transit center on Metro Parkway, and the replacement was planned around that terminus.
Called The Metropolitan, it is an $850 million project led by Concord Wilshire Capital, with homes, shops, restaurants, offices, and open space.
Demolition was complete by late September 2025, and that month Oakwood Homes was named to build the housing.
By midsummer 2026 the plan called for about 1,100 to 1,200 apartments and townhomes, roughly 115,000 square feet of shops and restaurants, and a central entertainment area called The Loop.
The company chosen to build those homes was gone by then: Oakwood Homes withdrew in June 2026, and Concord Wilshire went looking for another builder.
Work on the old mall land this year has been roads and utilities.
The first buildings are expected in 2027, with the homes going up before the shops.
Fiesta Mall cleared for plans that keep changing
Fiesta Mall in Mesa, Arizona, was built by Homart, the development company of Sears, at Southern Avenue and Alma School Road.
Sears opened first, in 1977, and the enclosed mall followed on October 3, 1979, with The Broadway and Goldwater's among its early department stores and Diamond's joining in 1980.
At its peak the mall had about 150 stores.
Macy's closed in 2014, and the corridors kept emptying until the mall shut in January 2018, with a Dillard's clearance store trading on after the rest went dark.
The plan announced at that closing, Campus @ US 60, would have converted the old buildings for schooling and health care, with shops and restaurants beside them, and taken tenants in 2019.
It was never built.
Crews started tearing the mall down on July 17, 2023, beginning at the former department stores and working across the property, and by December 2024 none of it was left.
That month the Mesa City Council voted unanimously to rezone the roughly 80-acre site for Fiesta Redefined, Verde Investments' plan for up to 4,000 homes, as much as 1.85 million square feet for businesses, and over 500,000 square feet set aside as open space.
None of those 4,000 homes was started.
By late 2025 the project had become Palo District and turned toward sports and health, and in November 2025 Mesa approved a Palo Theme Park District to finance and govern it.
Sunny Day Sports proposed a soccer stadium of about 25,000 seats, a women's health and sports campus, two hotels with about 600 rooms, and offices, shops, restaurants, and housing around them.
Stadium construction was announced to begin in summer 2026.
Summer passed without a start.
The roughly 80 acres remain cleared ground with no construction under way, and the stadium has no professional team.
Paradise Valley Mall gives way to PV
Paradise Valley Mall opened in Phoenix in 1978 at Tatum Boulevard and Cactus Road, an enclosed center that Westcor and Dayton-Hudson developed around large department stores, and it held its grand-opening celebration in February 1979.
Over the decades Sears, Macy's, and Dillard's all left, while Costco and JCPenney stayed open.
Two decisions came close together in 2021.
In February the city rezoned the roughly 92-acre mall tract for mixed uses, and in March Macerich, the longtime owner, sold the mall for $100 million to a new venture, keeping a 5 percent share while RED Development took the lead.
Its corridors closed that spring, and in July 2021 crews started knocking the mall down, the former Sears among the first buildings to go.
Costco and JCPenney kept trading through the demolition, reached by their own outside entrances.
The redevelopment was named PV in February 2022, with its first openings aimed at mid-2024.
Flower Child, one of the first new restaurants, opened in September 2024.
In January 2025 the 400 apartments of AVE Paradise Valley opened, the first new homes on any of these four mall sites.
By April 2025 a Whole Foods Market, Trevor's, Blanco Cocina + Cantina, and Sephora were open, and the new park was hosting public events and exercise classes.
PV now holds apartments with residents, a grocery store, restaurants, a park, and, since April 30, 2026, a Life Time athletic club of about 91,000 square feet.
Beside the club, Life Time Living, an 11-story building with 327 apartments, reached its full height in August 2026, with its residents still to come.
Foothills Mall keeps a third and becomes Uptown
Foothills Mall opened in 1982 near Ina Road and La Cholla Boulevard, on the northwest side of Tucson, Arizona, as an enclosed shopping center anchored by Goldwater's and Levy's, with an indoor central court and a movie theater.
By the mid-1990s neither department store remained, and the mall turned to outlet stores, entertainment, and big-box retailers.
Bourn Companies, which had owned it in the 1990s, bought it back in 2016.
In 2018 Pima County rezoned Bourn's roughly 51 acres for homes, offices, a hotel, restaurants, and shops, with some new buildings allowed to rise 10 stories.
Construction was expected to start in 2019. It didn't.
The enclosed concourse closed in January 2023, crews went to work on the interior in February, and by March the demolition had reached the outside walls.
Bourn's plan, named Uptown, took down more than 65 percent of the old mall and kept the rest.
Most of the demolition was done by late summer 2023, and AMC Theatres and Barnes & Noble stayed open in the surviving building while the land around them was rebuilt.
Uptown is planned at about 2.5 million square feet of homes, shops, restaurants, entertainment, and lodging.
Astrie, its first apartment building, took in residents on June 26, 2026.
The 144-room Tempo by Hilton reached its full five-story height in March 2026 and is still under construction, with its opening set for January 2027.
In May 2026 two restaurants, Clio and Memoir, signed leases there.
Foothills Mall was built in 1982 around one enclosed shopping corridor.
More than four decades later, people live on that land, and Uptown is the second of these four former mall sites to have residents.
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