Manhattan Village sits on Sepulveda Boulevard in Manhattan Beach, California, and was rebuilt between 2017 and 2022. It first opened its enclosed mall in 1981, beside an outdoor shopping area that had opened the year before.
Fry's Electronics came in 1992 and occupied a separate corner site next to the mall. The city left that lot out when it approved the mall's expansion, so the rebuild went up around it.
Fry's closed in February 2021. The rebuilt mall, with its new garages and outdoor shops, was finished the following year. The corner that had held the biggest electronics store on the property ended up with nothing new on it.
Today the mall is open, and parking in its three garages is free. The old Fry's building beside it is vacant. An apartment plan for that lot has been in city plan check since 2025, and no permit has been issued.
How Manhattan Village started on Chevron land
The future mall occupied only about 37 acres of a much larger Chevron holding.
By the early 1970s, Chevron Land was working through plans for roughly 187 acres in Manhattan Beach, with most of the rest planned for housing, recreation, and business uses.
That holding traced back to Standard Oil, which bought former melon-and-lima-bean farmland in 1911 and later used part of it for petroleum storage.
Retail moved first. Haagen Development and Chevron Land broke ground in 1979. Ralphs, Sav-On Drug, and smaller outdoor stores opened the next year.
The new center did not look newly planted for long: about 2,000 grown trees, costing nearly $1 million, were brought in to give it mature landscaping from the start.
Before the enclosed mall was finished, the land under it was already split.
In 1980 the owners of its separate tracts signed a construction, operation, and reciprocal easement agreement, which gave each tract rights to shared parking and access across land it didn't own.
Work on the enclosed mall began that September, and it opened around Buffums in October 1981.
Two Macy's buildings and a Fry's corner
Bullock's opened the mall's second department store in 1982. By 1989 the center produced 27 percent of Manhattan Beach's sales-tax revenue.
Then Buffums closed in the chain's 1990-1991 liquidation, and its building reopened in 1992 as Bullock's Men's.
When Bullock's converted to Macy's in 1996, both buildings became Macy's.
One company now ran the department stores at both ends of the enclosed mall, with the old Buffums as its Men's and Home store.
Fry's Electronics arrived in 1992 on a lot of its own at 3600 Sepulveda.
The store used a tropical theme, with Moai-style figures, a koi pond, and tiki figures. The corner sat beside the mall on a separate parcel.
The 2000 sale that skipped two parcels
In September 2000, the center's owners sold Manhattan Village for $89 million, and Madison Marquette became its new operator.
The purchase covered 424,100 of the center's 551,800 square feet.
Macy's parcel stayed out of the deal, and so did the Manhattan Hacienda building at 3500 Sepulveda.
Madison Marquette remodeled the part it bought.
The city approved the work in December 2001 with conditions: the whole center had to keep 4.1 parking spaces per 1,000 square feet, and a $125,000 bond had to cover a possible sound wall up to 12 feet high behind the grocery and drugstore if other noise measures failed.
Construction began in January 2002. Most of the central food court became stores, and Tacone was left as the only food vendor in the court.
The double-glass entrances gave way to wooden awnings and gas-lamp replicas.
In May 2004, Madison Marquette's interest passed to RREEF.
The new owner took over a mall whose biggest store and one of its buildings belonged to other owners.
Lot F, a missing stair, and a 3-2 vote
A 2008 settlement ended a two-year standoff over the mall and the Hacienda building.
RREEF dropped its objection to converting Hacienda office space into restaurants, while the Hacienda owners accepted the expansion plan attached to the agreement.
The fight had started after RREEF filed to expand the center in 2006 while Hacienda was pursuing its own conversion.
By 2011 Tin Roof Bistro was operating in the Hacienda property.
The settlement left parking as the open question.
The Hacienda building depended on shared parking and access, and Lot F sat directly across the drive aisle from it.
By 2012 the expansion plan included tearing down the six-screen cinema, which closed that May, and public hearings began the same year.
By May 2014, the argument had narrowed to parking and the west side of the proposed garage.
The Hacienda owners asked for the stair and elevator connection facing their building and for roughly 150 more nearby spaces.
The plan then before the council had fewer spaces near Hacienda than the 2008 version and no such connection.
The City Council approved the project that month with extra conditions, and RREEF paused the process over some of them.
On December 2, 2014, after at least 17 public meetings, the council gave final approval on a 3-2 vote.
It required 30 parking spaces with pedestrian access near 3500 Sepulveda. The Hacienda owners had asked for 150.
The approval covered the first two phases and deferred the third, at the Fry's corner.
Building around the Hacienda parcel
The approved plan kept changing.
A revised version won administrative approval in December 2016, the Hacienda owners challenged it, and RREEF applied for an amended permit instead.
Sensible Citizens of Manhattan Beach, which had sued to stop the expansion under state environmental law, settled in August 2017 and dropped its appeal.
The City Council approved the amended project that September over a Hacienda appeal, and construction began that year.
Macy's made its move in 2018.
It closed the Men's and Home store in the old Buffums building and consolidated into one 168,000-square-foot store at the other end of the mall.
The emptied building was converted to retail and offices, and it now holds West Elm, Anthropologie, Urban Outfitters, and CenterPoint Office, with kiln.
due to open in spring 2027.
New garages went up with a bridge connection to Macy's, and a 53,300-square-foot open-air addition brought restaurants, shops, and The Plaza.
The dispute outlasted the construction.
After a February 2023 trial, a federal court ruled on June 6, 2023, that the Hacienda owners had partly breached the 2008 settlement, and it awarded RREEF $3.5 million in construction costs caused by delays.
The rebuilt center was open by then, and the Hacienda building still stood on its own 0.7-acre parcel.
Manhattan Village now, and the Fry's site
Manhattan Village is a shopping, dining, office, and medical center at 3200 Sepulveda Boulevard, near Rosecrans Avenue, in Manhattan Beach, California.
It opened in 1980 and 1981 as an outdoor neighborhood center and an enclosed mall around Buffums.
Today it covers about 648,000 square feet, and parking in its three garages is free.
The Fry's corner went a different way.
Fry's closed all its stores on February 24, 2021, and its one-story, 46,000-square-foot building at 3600 N. Sepulveda was still vacant in October 2025.
The city had placed the site in its Residential Overlay District in 2023.
A qualifying housing project there is checked against fixed standards without a public hearing, while the mall's expansion had gone through at least 17 meetings.
Those rules now govern a plan for 273 rental apartments in two attached buildings, one 10 stories and one seven stories, over three levels of parking.
The plan entered plan check in 2025. As of September 2026, it's still in plan check, with no building permit and no construction start.
Macy's still owns its parcel, but the Hacienda property was sold in 2024.
Shoppers park free in three garages, and the old Fry's building next door is still waiting on a permit.
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.