Northgate Mall, an enclosed mall west of U.S. 101 in San Rafael, California, is sparsely occupied in 2026. Macy's is the one department store left trading there, and the cinema is closed.
Northgate opened in stages in 1964 and 1965, as an open-air center of separate low buildings. Raised stone planters and planted beds filled the courts that shoppers crossed between stores.
Sears, which anchored the mall's south end, closed its store in 2018. Interior stripping of the former Sears buildings began in January 2026, and by July the buildings themselves were being taken down.
That demolition is the first work under a plan the City Council has approved. It calls for removing about 144,400 square feet of the central mall and putting open-air streets and a town square there.
An open-air Northgate opens, 1964 to 1965
On June 26, 1964, hundreds of shoppers came into the Emporium's new Marin store.
Opening-day attractions included rides on a motorized San Francisco cable car at no charge.
From a furnished customer patio, shoppers could see the escalators through their glass sides.
The Emporium took 200,000 square feet of a shopping center planned in 1962 at roughly 400,000.
Terra Linda's postwar housing growth, along with North San Rafael's new roads, schools, and Civic Center, had created the market for it.
With the first group of mall shops open on March 11, 1965, Northgate, west of U.S. 101 in the Terra Linda area of San Rafael, California, was an open-air shopping center.
It is now an enclosed mall approved for redevelopment as Northgate Town Square.
Its separate low retail buildings stood around open pedestrian courts, and Lawrence Halprin worked on the landscape between them.
In the central plaza, a sculptural concrete fountain stood with light posts on either side.
The courts themselves mixed low planted beds with raised planters of natural stone.
Downtown loses business, Sears builds south
Northgate's chain stores and acres of free parking drew business away from downtown San Rafael in the second half of the 1960s.
In 1972 the center grew south.
Sears built a two-story store of roughly 225,000 square feet there, with pale gray brick walls and orange tile accents, along with a separate automotive-service building.
New one-story mall units filled the ground between Sears and the original buildings.
Those units turned a dispersed group of buildings into one long shopping complex, and shoppers still walked between its sections in the open air.
Parking went from about 2,323 spaces to about 3,023 with the expansion, and the Sears auto building and the big parking fields reinforced the car-oriented character of the south end.
The 1972 work was the last major addition to Northgate before the mid-1980s.
Glass roofs enclose the courts in 1986
In 1985 The Village at Corte Madera, an upscale open-air center with major department stores, opened closer to Northgate's Marin customers.
In 1986 the walks between the separate mall buildings went under gabled glass roofs on metal frames.
The open-air circulation was removed with that work, and so was much of the Halprin landscape: raised planters and exterior paving disappeared from the main pedestrian route.
Interior flooring went down where the outdoor walkways had been.
Under the high roofs, the mall was climate-controlled and broken up by frequent structural supports, and palm trees were later planted inside the corridor.
Outside, in the same mid-1980s building period, a two-level parking garage went up on the west side.
Macerich rebuilds and adds Oak Plaza
In 2008 the mall's owner, Macerich, began rebuilding it and went on to spend about $79 million. The glass roof stayed, and so did the enclosed center.
Exterior walls, entrances, and storefronts changed, new restaurant spaces opened onto outdoor areas, and the food court was rebuilt.
Panera Bread took one of the restaurant spaces facing outside.
Next to the enclosed mall, Macerich built Oak Plaza, an outdoor gathering and dining area.
Kohl's opened in the west anchor building on September 30, 2009, and the rebuilt mall began reopening on November 12.
Macerich finished the work in May 2010.
Neighbors petition against a Costco warehouse
Sears closed its San Rafael store in April 2018, and its south-end buildings and parking field became available for redevelopment.
In 2019 the mall's new owner, Merlone Geier Partners, and Costco brought the city a concept for the site: a Costco warehouse of about 147,000 square feet in place of the Sears retail and tire-center space, a gas station with 30 pumps, and a three-level parking structure on top of the warehouse.
Before any formal application was filed, Responsible Growth in Marin formed to oppose the plan and gathered more than 1,000 petition signatures.
Objections centered on traffic, air pollution from idling vehicles, noise from deliveries and fueling, and the size of the parking structure.
The Planning Commission and Design Review Board discussed the concept in October 2019, and it went no further.
On March 10, 2021, Merlone Geier filed a mixed-use housing and retail plan in its place, and the company later named the neighborhood response to the warehouse and gas station as a reason it changed direction.
The city approves cutting the mall apart
Over more than three years of design and environmental review, the plan was revised several times.
The town square became larger and part of the project's first phase.
Along the edge nearest the single-family neighborhood, three-story townhomes replaced a planned five-story apartment building.
The plan also showed the mall's 15-screen cinema, opened in November 1994, renovated and enlarged. Its last films were shown on November 10, 2024.
On December 2, 2024, the City Council approved Northgate Town Square, with up to 1,422 homes.
In the first phase, the plan called for removing about 144,400 square feet of the central enclosed mall, out of a main mall building of 605,300 square feet.
New open-air streets, paths, and bicycle routes were to run through that space, and at their center would be a town square of about 57,000 square feet, with a lawn, a stage, fountains, and play space.
Sears comes down while the indoor mall stays open
Construction started inside the old Sears complex, where interior stripping began the week of January 26, 2026.
That work was complete by April 21, and by July the Sears buildings themselves were being taken down.
Kohl's had put its San Rafael store on a January 2025 list of 27 underperforming stores to close by April, and the store closed that spring.
By 2026 the enclosed mall was sparsely occupied.
The Emporium's 1964 building has carried the Macy's name since 1996, and the store was operating on three selling floors in October 2026.
The approved plan allows that building to be demolished in the second phase if Macy's leaves, and it sets no fixed date for Macy's to close.
By September 2026, the food court Macerich rebuilt was down to a single gelato vendor.
Under the glass roofs added in 1986, the indoor mall is still open to shoppers.
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