Sierra Vista Mall opened in Clovis, California, in October 1988 with Target, Gottschalks, and Mervyn's as its anchors. Sears came in 1999 with the biggest store the mall ever added, making four.
Then the chains began to fold. Mervyn's closed in December 2008, and Gottschalks sold off its fixtures and furniture before locking up on a Sunday evening in July 2009.
A revived Gottschalk store was promised for 2010 and never opened. Kohl's rebuilt the Mervyn's building, while the old Gottschalks waited years for a new use.
Sears left in 2021, and three of the four were gone. That leaves the Sears building, and what has happened to it since.
Sierra Vista Mall opens at Shaw and Clovis
In April 1988, crews were at work on the southeast corner of Shaw and Clovis avenues, putting up a $35 million mall for the Hahn Company along one of the main east-west shopping roads through Fresno and Clovis.
Part of the job was a 95,000-square-foot Gottschalks, drawn by Millard Archuleta Architects of Los Angeles, the same firm that designed the mall wrapped around it.
Both were due to be finished in October. The schedule held.
Sierra Vista Mall opened in October 1988 as a one-story enclosed regional mall in Clovis, California, with about 474,000 square feet of floor space split between the big stores and the smaller shops.
Hahn, which held a 77 percent share of the project, had planned the center around three anchors, Target, Gottschalks, and Mervyn's, and all three were trading from the first season.
Among the smaller tenants that opened with the mall was a Hot Dog on a Stick.
Sears arrives and the cinema grows to 16 screens
Sears came in 1999 with a 116,600-square-foot store, bigger than any of the three it joined, and more shops went up alongside it.
By 2001 Sierra Vista covered about 580,700 square feet and had four anchors.
In 2006 about 82 smaller stores lined its corridors, a Waldenbooks, a Victoria's Secret, and a Foot Locker among them.
That year LandValue, which had managed the mall since 2002 and owned it by 2006, started the biggest rebuilding since opening.
The plan handed the space of the mall's six-screen theater, about 23,000 square feet, over to shops.
A 16-screen cinema with stadium seating, about 55,000 square feet, went up to replace the old theater, along with roughly 50,000 square feet of new stores.
The work also pushed the mall outdoors.
By March 2008, about 100,000 square feet of expansion was close to finished: restaurants and shops set around a park with fountains, fire pits, seating, and a 21-foot, three-ton sculpture of steel and bronze.
Tacone Flavor Grill had been open about three weeks, Jamba Juice and Chipotle were moving in, and Panera Bread and Powell's Sweet Shoppe were expected that summer.
The fight over a rival cinema three miles west
In August 2006, the same year Sierra Vista was building its new theater, a lease was signed for another one about three miles west.
It was part of Campus Pointe, a project beside Fresno State that also planned apartments, offices, shops, and a hotel.
Maya Cinemas would build a 14-screen multiplex there with about 2,700 seats, in a building of 55,000 square feet, roughly the size of the cinema going up at Sierra Vista.
The mall's owner sued in April 2007.
The suit challenged the project's environmental review and raised a conflict of interest: the chief executive of Maya Cinemas, who held shares in the theater company, also sat on the California State University board of trustees.
He left the board in May 2007. A second suit followed in June, after the project won a second approval.
In July 2009 the trial court ruled that the conflict was real and barred by law, and it threw out the theater lease.
The judge also held that the project's environmental study fell short on water, on traffic and parking, and on air quality.
In 2011 the appeals court ordered the project's approvals set aside, yet it declined to halt construction and limited the conflict ruling to the theater lease alone.
Campus Pointe kept building. In May 2015 Maya Cinemas opened a 16-screen theater there, matching the screen count at Sierra Vista.
Two department stores close, and Kohl's comes in
Mervyn's closed its Sierra Vista store in December 2008, as the chain was liquidated. Gottschalks filed for bankruptcy the next month.
In its final days the Clovis store sold off what was left at deep discounts, fixtures and furniture included, and at 6 p.m. on Sunday, July 12, 2009, it closed for good.
Together the two stores had held about 27 percent of the mall's rentable space.
The mall had been 87.9 percent occupied in October 2006. By June 2009 the figure was 62.7 percent.
The Gottschalks building got a promise.
In April 2010 a new department store carrying the Gottschalk name was announced for the empty space, with an opening set for November 2010.
That date passed, and the opening moved to before Easter 2011.
By May 2011 neither date had held, no further work was visible, and the store never opened.
Kohl's took the other building.
The chain rebuilt the old Mervyn's and opened there on September 26, 2010, planning to staff it with about 130 to 150 people.
In December 2012 the county sheriff's Holiday Heroes blood drive set up for five days at the mall's east end, near Kohl's.
Go-karts and laser tag fill the old Gottschalks
By spring 2014, MB2 Raceway was hiring for an indoor electric go-kart track in part of the former Gottschalks.
The mall around it was in money trouble.
After a miscalculated ground rent sent more than $1 million of the mall's cash to the landowner, the loan was handed to a special servicer in September 2013, with default close.
In January 2015 the lender foreclosed, and the mall went at auction for $39 million to the lender's own investment group, the only bidder.
The debts tied to the mall came to about $89 million.
Another part of the Gottschalks building filled with play.
In December 2016, crews were rebuilding it for No Surrender Adventure Park, which opened in 2017 in about 34,000 square feet: a laser-tag arena two stories high, a three-story play structure for children, virtual-reality games, and rooms for parties.
A two-story ropes course with 17 obstacles followed by 2019.
MB2's track took about 58,000 square feet. By 2017 the center was 90 percent leased.
The cinema changed too, putting in reclining seats in 2016.
In October 2018 the mall's Boofest brought a costume contest to center court, along with a trunk-or-treat area, bounce houses, and emergency vehicles on display.
That same weekend the cinema ran a sensory-friendly screening, with the lights left up, the sound turned down, and the audience free to move around.
Sears leaves and K1 Speed takes the track
In 2019 new food kept coming to the outdoor section.
Chocolate Wishes & Treats opened a shop beside the cinema, and in June Teazer World Tea Market opened its first Clovis store.
Inside the enclosed mall, many storefronts sat empty.
In August 2019 Mason Asset Management and Namdar Group bought the mall's leasehold for $41 million.
Santa stayed on the holiday program.
In 2020 the mall held Santa visits at a distance and offered Santa photos built from pictures of families or pets that shoppers uploaded.
Sears announced in February 2021 that it would close its Clovis store, and it shut that year.
Its building, the largest store the mall had ever added, stood empty. Rio Grill Brazilian Steakhouse closed in 2021 too, after 13 years.
The go-kart track changed hands instead of closing.
MB2 shut in the fall of 2022, and in March 2023 K1 Speed opened in the same space with electric karts in adult and junior sizes, arcade games, pool tables, and rooms for events.
In December 2023 Two Hands Korean Corn Dogs opened at the mall.
Hot Dog on a Stick held its last weekend at Sierra Vista at the end of December 2024. It had been there since the mall opened, 36 years.
The mall loses its cooling-center role
In June 2026 the city of Clovis named Sierra Vista its extreme-heat cooling center, for days forecast at 105 degrees or hotter.
By late July the cooling problem was uneven.
Clovis officials found the main corridors cool on two visits, while several stores relied on portable air conditioners and fans.
Ownership said several rooftop units were back in service, with another replacement pending for four tenant spaces.
At the end of July 2026 the city dropped the mall from its list of cooling centers and sent that service to the Clovis Community Center.
The mall did not close.
Sierra Vista is owned by Mason Asset Management and run by Namdar. Target and Kohl's are its big stores.
K1 Speed's karts and No Surrender's laser-tag arena fill the old Gottschalks building.
In September 2026 the Maya theater at Campus Pointe, the one the mall's owner had fought in court, closed, and Galaxy Theatres was announced as its next operator.
Sierra Vista's own 16-screen cinema, recliners and all, keeps showing films. No replacement has been named for the Sears building.
In 2001 the mall had four anchor stores.
One of them still trades under its original name, and the largest, Sears, stands empty. Electric karts run inside another.
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