In the 1970s, the Central Valley usually did not get new things first. Sacramento got them first. The Bay Area got them first.
Modesto, a farming city with many working families, usually got them later, after the rest of California.
That changed on March 12, 1977, when The Hahn Company opened Vintage Faire Mall at the north end of Modesto where Sisk Road, Dale Road, Standiford Avenue, and State Route 99 meet.
The mall was a major project for the area. It had two full floors, more than 1 million sq ft of enclosed retail space, and four department store anchors in its wings: Weinstock's, Gottschalks, Sears, and JCPenney.
When it opened, no enclosed shopping center between Sacramento and Fresno was close to it in size. It was not a strip mall. It was the kind of place people would drive forty minutes to visit.
People did exactly that. Families came from Turlock, Merced, and smaller towns across the valley floor.
They came because the mall put many stores in one air-conditioned building, because parking was free, and because people could spend much of a Saturday walking through it.
Nothing like it was nearby. For a region that had spent years seeing bigger cities get new things first, the mall felt like the valley was finally getting the same attention.
The First Loss and a Sign of What Retail Does
For nearly twenty years after it opened, Vintage Faire ran almost exactly as designed.
The four anchor stores held their corners, the corridors stayed full of specialty shops and boutiques, and the mall became the kind of place teenagers hung around, whether they were buying anything or not.
International Imports, one of the original tenants, stayed open inside the building all the way until March 2020 - forty-three years, which is about as long as any retail business runs anywhere.
The first real crack appeared in 1996. Weinstock's, one of the three original anchors and a California department store chain with decades of history, was absorbed by Macy's.
The Vintage Faire location did not survive the transition. It closed, leaving one of the mall's anchor spaces dark for the first time.
What filled it was Gottschalks - a Fresno-based chain with a strong following in the Central Valley - which moved into the former Weinstock's space, keeping that wing of the mall occupied.
It would hold that space until 2009, when the company went bankrupt and closed everything it had.
Nobody panicked. Sears and JCPenney were still there, still pulling traffic. It was one store. Malls lose stores. The difference, which nobody could know yet, was that this was just the beginning of it.
Macerich Spends $10 Million on a Fresh Look
By 2001, Vintage Faire Mall had been in daily use for twenty-four years, and the wear was easy to see. The carpet was worn down. Many fixtures looked old.
The escalators were also showing their age. Macerich, the mall's owner and operator, invested $10 million to update the property.
The renovation included work throughout the mall. New escalators were installed, along with new railings and new carpet on the second floor.
The first floor got all new tile. The old overhead light fixtures were replaced, and new signs were added outside the building.
Macerich also installed a new elevator in the center of the mall, which had not been part of the original design. That gave shoppers who could not use stairs another way to move between floors.
The biggest change involved the building layout. Part of the second floor was turned into a dedicated food court. Before that, eating inside the mall was less convenient.
After the renovation, shoppers could go to Carl's Jr., Starbucks, Panda Express, and Hot Dog on a Stick in one area, with seating nearby.
That made it easier for people to stay longer and return more often. After the work was finished, the mall looked current for the early 2000s.
A Parking Lot Becomes Something Worth Visiting
The 2008 expansion at Vintage Faire was an unusual move - not an addition to the existing enclosed building, but a conversion of former parking lot space into something completely different.
Macerich built The Village at Vintage Faire Mall, an outdoor lifestyle center tucked on the south side between Gottschalks and Sears.
It opened in November 2008, which, given that a full-scale financial crisis was unfolding across the country at the time, took some nerve.
The opening stores were the kind of names that signaled a deliberate upgrade in the retail mix. Coach, Bebe, Coldwater Creek, and Sephora moved in.
BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse opened as the anchor dining option, and Apple - this was 2008, a year after the first iPhone - opened a store there too.
Chipotle Mexican Grill and Buffalo Wild Wings followed. For a regional mall in Modesto, it was a genuinely strong lineup.
The years since have thinned it out. Bebe, Coldwater Creek, and Charming Charlie are gone. Of the original tenants, Sephora, BJ's, and Apple have stayed.
The current Village includes Chipotle, Men's Wearhouse, Chico's, and DeVons Jewelers, with two outdoor spots sitting empty.
Sears, Forever 21, and Years of Hard Losses
The years from 2015 to 2019 were difficult for Vintage Faire Mall. Many of the problems came from national retail companies that had been important to the mall for a long time.
The biggest loss was Sears. Sears had been at the mall since the grand opening in 1977. In 2015, Sears Holdings moved 235 of its properties into a new company called Seritage Growth Properties.
This deal made it easier for Sears to use the value of its real estate, but it did not fix the deeper problems in the stores.
Three years later, on October 15, 2018, the company announced that the Modesto Sears would close. The store closed for good on January 6, 2019.
After that, the building was left empty. It was a very large space and it could not be reused quickly.
Forever 21 reached a similar outcome more quickly. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September 2019.
The store held liquidation sales through November, and the Vintage Faire location closed on December 31, 2019.
Other stores also left during this period, including Gap, Abercrombie & Fitch, GameStop, and Borders Express.
Some of these stores closed because more shoppers were buying online. Others closed because of company decisions and business problems. In some cases, both factors played a role.
These closures created a real problem for Macerich. The former Sears space, especially, was too large for most retailers. Filling it required a different idea of what an anchor tenant in a shopping mall could be.
What Filled the Gap and Where Things Stand
The answer to the Sears building came in two pieces. By the end of September 2019, the interior was being stripped out to make way for Dick's Sporting Goods, which expanded into the space and opened in 2020.
Separately, the Sears auto center was knocked down, and Dave & Buster's went up in its place, opening in 2022.
The combination worked: Dick's brought back the kind of everyday retail traffic that an anchor store is supposed to generate, and Dave & Buster's gave people a reason to show up at night, on weekends, when they were not necessarily shopping for anything.
As of early 2026, Vintage Faire Mall has about 150 stores.
The anchor lineup is JCPenney, two Macy's locations (women's and children's, men's and home), Furniture City (former Forever 21), Dick's Sporting Goods, Dave & Buster's, and Bob's Discount Furniture in the outparcel.
Long-running tenants like Victoria's Secret, Footlocker, Build-A-Bear Workshop, See's Candies, and DeVons Jewelers are still there.
Newer, smaller shops - Q-Luv, Mystical Lucero - have moved in where older names used to be.
By 2025 and early 2026, Vintage Faire was adding new businesses again. Lovisa was opened on June 13, 2025.
Kura Revolving Sushi Bar was announced in July 2025 and was open by November 18, 2025. K-Ramyun was named as a coming tenant in October 2025.
Candeeland, a candy-themed indoor playground, opened in February 2026.
The mall runs community events year-round and acts as a central stop for the StanRTA regional bus network.
It still draws from the same wide area it always has - smaller towns, long drives, families who have been coming here since the 1980s, and now bring their own kids.
Forty-eight years in, that part has not changed much.
