Carson Mall opened in 1973 at Avalon and Del Amo in Carson, California, with a single enclosed level and three department stores. It goes by SouthBay Pavilion now.
One of the three closed in 1991, and IKEA took over its building on three floors. Sears held on until 2017. JCPenney outlasted it.
After Sears closed that year, the building was subdivided. Burlington and Ross moved in. ALDI later took part of it. The mall is still enclosed, and JCPenney is still at the end of it.
Everything around it is big boxes, restaurants, and a parking lot with a drive-through in it. Part of it isn't even the same property anymore.
Carson Mall had no public restrooms in the common area
Carson Mall opened in 1973 as one enclosed level built around three department stores.
For years, a shopper who needed a restroom had to walk into Sears, JCPenney, or The Broadway because the common area didn't have any.
By the late 1980s, the mall still had no movie theater or escalators, and about 90 specialty shops operated between the anchors.
Its interior still carried bright orange and yellow floor tile into 1991.
The mall was selling about $150 per square foot a year in October 1987, against a $175 average across 75 Los Angeles and Orange County shopping centers.
Carson Mall Partners had bought it that August and began making changes. By 1990, the mall had a central food court and public restrooms of its own.
Vacancy had fallen to about 2 percent after reaching as high as 20 percent in earlier years.
The Broadway building became IKEA
The Broadway began preparing to close its Carson store in June 1991, which left the mall with two anchors, both of them coming up on 1993 lease expirations.
IKEA wanted the building.
Its agreement depended on the whole mall being rebuilt around it, so on December 17, 1991 the city council voted 4-0 for a $13.5 million package: $5 million toward IKEA's purchase of the Broadway site and an $8.5 million renovation loan to the mall's owners.
The rebuilt center reopened on November 18, 1992 as South Bay Pavilion at Carson. The orange tile was gone. Pastels, neon, and skylights replaced it.
The approved design called for a 60-foot vaulted glass ceiling, lit so drivers on Interstate 405 could see it at night.
IKEA filled the former Broadway building across three floors, and its route walked shoppers through all three before letting them out.
Reaching the mall concourse from the store meant a long corridor, and the store's usual flow of customers didn't go that way.
A year after the reopening, mall sales were up 20 percent. Take IKEA, JCPenney, and Sears out of that total and the increase was 3 percent.
The 1998 theater that never opened
The next big thing announced for the mall was a multiplex, and it was going up beside the anchors.
Carson's Redevelopment Agency was to provide $5 million in loan subsidies toward the $20 million project.
Announced with Magic Johnson Theatres in July 1998, the plan put 14 screens and as many as 3,450 seats between JCPenney and IKEA.
The timetable called for work to begin that fall and finish in March 1999.
By January 1999 the deal had fallen through. The reason isn't clear.
Carson got no indoor multiplex at the center for another 16 years. When it did, the screens came out of the mall's own floor.
The south wing came down for Target
Hopkins Real Estate Group bought the mall-owned stores in 2003 and made room by demolition.
The enclosed south wing came down, and a 146,000-square-foot Target went up on ground that had been interior mall and shops.
Around the new anchor came Old Navy, 24 Hour Fitness, Chili's, The Children's Place, Panera Bread, and Five Guys.
By fall 2007, the food court had been upgraded, the public restrooms rebuilt, and the Pavilion Children's Play area added.
It was the same food court the mall had gained 17 years earlier.
Under a November 2006 agreement, Carson's redevelopment agency separately provided $4.6 million for common-area and tenant improvements, with that agency-assisted work completed in January 2009.
Hopkins later said sales across the center had risen 31 percent during its ownership.
41,433 square feet traded for 13 screens
Vintage Capital Group took over the center in 2009, and the theater idea came back as a demolition.
The plan approved on September 24, 2013 called for demolishing 41,433 square feet of existing mall floor for Cinemark, part of it occupied by Chuck E. Cheese and part of it by New Millennium Secondary School.
The school's rooms were inside the mall, and they went with the rest of it.
The theater got smaller as it went through review.
The arcade was dropped, the seat count came down, and open-air exit corridors took more off the building.
The early plan called for 14 screens; the finished theater had 13.
Cinemark Carson and XD opened on May 28, 2015 with wall-to-wall screens in all 13 auditoriums and the XD system in one of them.
Part of the food court became one store
The food court rebuilt in 2007 was still in that form eight years later.
In November 2015 the owners asked the city to remove it, all of it, including the common eating area around the tables, and hand the space to one large retailer.
That proposal was continued and sent back to staff.
The version approved on May 10, 2016 took out only part of the food court and produced a 16,700-square-foot store.
F21 RED opened in it. Its storefront used red metal panels and textured wall treatments beside display windows running from floor to ceiling.
Chile Verde Mexican Food, Wingstop, Vitamin World, and Jamba Juice took spaces around what was left of the eating area. F21 RED is gone now.
Ulta Beauty and CAVA occupy parts of its former suite, and the part of the food court that came out has been tenant space ever since.
The Sears end became a separate center
Sears came apart from the outside in.
The city reviewed a plan in 2015 to turn its auto center into restaurants, and Jersey Mike's and Chipotle were open in that building by late 2016.
The department store itself closed in 2017.
One plan cut the building into four retail spaces, a 2018 revision made it three, and Burlington opened inside it in 2018, followed by Ross in 2019.
Then that end of the property changed hands.
NewMark Merrill bought 182,200 square feet of the former Sears property in September 2020, taking over the group known as The Shops at SouthBay Pavilion and marketing it as its own shopping center.
An ALDI, approved in 2021, opened in another piece of the old department store and runs 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.
SouthBay Pavilion is up for sale again
The last thing left to give up was parking.
An In-N-Out was planned in June 2022 on nearly an acre of the lot near Olive Garden, with a drive-through lane built to hold 24 cars.
It was serving by 2026. The center kept 4,527 stalls, against the 4,398 the city code requires.
What stands at 20700 South Avalon Boulevard in Carson, California, is a regional shopping center that opened in 1973 as Carson Mall and took the SouthBay Pavilion name in the 1992 rebuild.
Part of it is still the enclosed mall, with JCPenney and Cinemark inside it.
The rest is IKEA in the old Broadway building, Target on the old south wing, a former Sears cut into big boxes under another owner, and restaurants standing loose in the parking fields.
The main ownership is on the market again in 2026: 643,000 square feet of a 1,014,100-square-foot center, 97.9 percent leased.
More than 10 million visits landed on the property over the last twelve months.
The people walking from Burlington to JCPenney cross from one owner's property onto another's.
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