Moreno Valley Mall is a two-level enclosed shopping mall at 22500 Town Circle in Moreno Valley, California, just off the SR-60 and I-215 junction. It's been there since 1992.
The land under it used to be Riverside International Raceway, a road course that ran from 1957 to 1989.
The raceway's owner partnered with Sears' development company, and the track came down so TownGate could go up.
The mall opened with four department stores: Sears, JCPenney, May Company California, and Harris.
One still trades under its own name, one became Macy's, and the other two are gone.
Along the way came a city loan that fell short, a corporate bankruptcy, and a $60.3 million sale at an online auction. The Sears closed in 2020.
In June 2026, Sky Zone opened trampolines upstairs in the former Sears while the city and Lighthouse Immersive build a museum project in the same former store.
The pattern across 34 years is a mall trading department stores for other reasons to show up. Here's how that happened.
The race to build Moreno Valley's mall
In 1986, Moreno Valley had 70,000 residents and no regional mall. Anyone who wanted to spend a Saturday at one drove to Riverside.
Two development teams looked at that gap and started racing.
Fritz Duda, owner of Riverside International Raceway, partnered with Homart, the mall-building arm of Sears.
Their TownGate plan covered 590 acres southeast of the Pomona Freeway and Interstate 215: a $600 million project with a 1.25 million-square-foot mall at its center.
Just west, Edward J. DeBartolo Corp. and Riverside's T. & S. Development pitched Canyon Springs, a 1.3 million-square-foot mall inside a 400-acre, $500 million development.
The area couldn't support two regional malls, and everyone involved knew it.
The winner would be whichever side signed department stores first.
Homart had Sears in the family. DeBartolo's side had ties to Bullock's and Bloomingdale's through JMB/Federated. TownGate won.
The racetrack had to go
Duda's land held a working racetrack.
Riverside International Raceway had run road races there since 1957, and the Towngate plan called for demolishing it.
The city approved the Towngate 200 Specific Plan on October 27, 1987.
The raceway closed in 1989, after 32 years of racing.
A 1991 amendment steered Planning Area 2 harder toward retail, and by June of that year a 1.2 million-square-foot, two-level mall was under construction, aimed at a fall 1992 opening.
Four anchors and 140 stores
Moreno Valley Mall at Towngate opened in 1992 at 22500 Town Circle in Moreno Valley, California, with Sears, JCPenney, May Company California, and Harris Department Stores at the corners and 140 specialty stores between them.
A food court, 6,500 parking spaces, and two levels of interior corridors.
The site sloped, with 20 feet of grade change between the upper-level side and the north side.
So three parking fields fed the upper level, and three fed the lower one, and each level had its own front doors.
The design faced inward, standard for the last generation of enclosed malls.
Outside sat the parking and, beyond it, State Route 60, where daily traffic would later count 126,000 vehicles.
Valued at $66 million, promised at $107 million
By September 1996, the numbers were short.
The city had put up a $13 million infrastructure loan tied to the mall, expecting mall revenue to cover it.
Revenue came in low.
The repayment schedule stretched to a projected 2026, with the loan balance set to peak at $19.5 million before it shrank.
And the mall itself was valued at $66 million, against an original valuation of $107 million.
The mall was four years old.
The city's payoff date had just moved 30 years into the future, and it landed on the same year fire officials would recommend closing parts of the building.
The anchor names kept changing
The four names on the anchors didn't hold.
May Company California became Robinsons-May in 1993 after merging with J. W. Robinson's.
In 2006, the Robinsons-May sign came down, and Macy's went up, part of Federated's takeover of the May chains.
Harris was bought by Gottschalks in 1998.
Gottschalks liquidated in 2009, and its box stayed empty for years, still penciled into the 2023 city plan as a future retail anchor.
Sears and JCPenney kept their names.
Two of the mall's four corners were rewritten by mergers and one bankruptcy, while the building itself never moved.
16 screens changed the evenings
Harkins Moreno Valley 16 opened on June 23, 2006, at 22350 Town Circle: 16 screens, more than 3,000 seats.
It gave the mall a serious evening draw, years before trampolines entered the mall plan.
The 2023 redevelopment plan later drew a whole entertainment district around the theater, with outdoor patio dining planned along its edges.
Bankruptcy, lenders, and bungee jumping
General Growth Properties bought into Homart's mall portfolio, Moreno Valley Mall included, then in 2007 bought out the New York State Common Retirement Fund's 50 percent interest in the GGP/Homart I portfolio.
In April 2009, GGP filed for Chapter 11.
The mall came out the other side in worse shape.
By 2013, city documents were calling CW Capital the owner of the Moreno Valley Mall, and the leasing mix had moved far outside the department-store model: Round1's bowling lanes and arcade, Crunch Fitness, Action Time.
People came to bowl and jump while traditional mall retail weakened around them.
Sold at online auction
The mall went up for sale through RealINSIGHT Marketplace, CWCapital's online auction platform.
Six buyers showed interest.
International Growth Properties, a Los Angeles-based real estate company, closed on November 28, 2017.
Public figures for the deal ran from $60.3 million to $63 million depending on what got counted; $63 million is the number that stuck.
That's for a property the city once valued at $107 million.
The new owner added the mall to a short list of similar projects, alongside Oviedo Mall in Florida and Central Mall in Kansas.
The asset was healthier than the price suggested: 96.8 percent occupancy across 1,090,000 square feet in 2018, anchored by Harkins, JCPenney, Macy's, and Sears.
Sears closed after 28 years
Sears Holdings had put the Moreno Valley property into Seritage Growth Properties in 2015, along with many other Sears and Kmart locations.
The November 2019 national closure list included Moreno Valley, and by early 2020 the store was gone, 28 years after Sears' development arm helped win the race that built the mall.
That left a 169,400-square-foot Sears property at 22550 Town Circle, on 11 acres, waiting for a second life. It got several.
1,627 homes on the parking lots
In May and June 2023, the City Council approved a huge redevelopment plan for the property.
The redevelopment plan allows 1,627 residential units in four multifamily communities, two hotels with 270 rooms, a three-story office building of 60,000 square feet, a pavilion-style food market where the food court is now, a central plaza with room for a stage and water elements, and a parking structure.
Almost all of it goes on existing parking lots at the eastern end of the site.
The enclosed mall stays. Macy's and JCPenney own their own buildings and sit outside the plan entirely.
At the May public hearing, the vote was 4-0, with one member absent, after 11 speakers.
Construction was supposed to start in 2024.
By 2026, the visible work was happening inside the old Sears, while the parking-lot housing still waited.
A museum downstairs, trampolines upstairs
The mall carries a civic layer many regional malls lack. Moreno Valley's public library runs a branch inside it.
And in 2025 the city went much further: it leased 75,000 square feet of the former Sears first floor for 10 years and hired Lighthouse Immersive Studios to build the Moreno Valley Museum & ArtSpace there.
By June 2025, city budget documents put the project at $10 million and listed January 31, 2026, as the target opening.
By June 2026, the city still listed the Museum & ArtSpace as under construction.
Upstairs, Sky Zone leased almost 50,000 square feet and opened on June 19, 2026, with a Friday-morning ribbon-cutting: more than 40,000 square feet of trampolines, dodgeball, slides, and a warrior course.
The floor plan that opened in 1992 as a single Sears now splits between a city museum going in below and kids bouncing above.
Two weeks with the doors locked
At the close of business on February 19, 2026, the city ordered portions of the mall closed after its fire marshal identified nine critical life-safety and fire-protection violations, from the fire alarm system to emergency exit lighting.
Macy's and JCPenney stayed open through the whole thing because their buildings and fire systems are separate.
Harkins stayed open too, with its own fire-safety clearance.
Three categories were fixed within a week.
The mall reopened on March 5 under conditions: fire watch staff posted at two fire-rated doors, two others sealed shut, and a March 31 deadline to fix all four.
The owner also owed the city $466,000 for law enforcement services and $280,000 in code-enforcement fines, the city said.
What's at Moreno Valley Mall now
As of July 2026, Moreno Valley Mall is open seven days a week, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday and until 7 p.m. on Sunday.
Macy's and JCPenney still hold the department-store ends.
Harkins and Round1 carry the evenings, Sky Zone is the newest draw, the museum is still being built on the floor below it, and the food court runs 10 eateries.
The Gottschalks box is still empty, waiting on the retail anchor the 2023 plan sketches for it.
The 1,627 homes remain in the approved plan.
What operates today is a 1.1 million-square-foot enclosed mall that gets its crowds from movie showtimes, bowling lanes, trampoline sessions, and library cards as much as from shopping bags.
