West Valley Mall and Tracy's I-205 bet
West Valley Mall is at 3200 Naglee Road, just north of Grant Line Road in Tracy, California. You don't have to be sentimental to see why it ended up there: the spot is made for people on the go.
The mall sits just off I-205, the short freeway connector between I-580 and I-5, so it has always been both a part of Tracy and a stop for people driving between the Bay Area and the Central Valley.
In the early 1990s, as Tracy got bigger, shopping followed a familiar pattern: first big stores like Walmart, then the main attraction, an indoor mall meant to be the main place to shop indoors.
General Growth Properties built the West Valley Mall and opened it in 1995. The mall covers about 750,000 square feet, all on one level.
This layout made the mall feel large but not too much to handle. From the beginning, it was easy to get to, with freeway exits and nearby streets making it simple to reach.
Next door, the Naglee Park and Ride lot linked the mall to buses, back when local Tracer buses and regional SMART buses stopped there a lot.
The mall was built for quick shopping trips, movie nights, hanging out, and the classic Tracy habit of stopping by for a minute and then staying much longer.
Anchors arrive, and the theater follows
The first version of West Valley Mall had the clean, declarative logic of the mid-1990s: two department-scale magnets, a bright interior corridor, and the expectation that smaller stores would arrange themselves around the gravity.
When it opened in 1995, the anchors were Gottschalks, at about 101,000 square feet, and Target, at about 97,000.
Target, especially, suited the new Tracy - practical, broad-shouldered, and willing to sell you socks, storage bins, and a minor reinvention of your life in one receipt.
The next two years filled in the mall's social calendar. In 1996, a 14-screen Cinemark opened, giving the complex a nightlife that did not require downtown.
That same year, JCPenney arrived in a roughly 50,000-square-foot store, relocating from elsewhere in Tracy, which is the retail equivalent of a family moving to the new subdivision because the schools are "better."
In 1997, Sears opened an 85,000-square-foot store, and two junior anchors - Ross Dress for Less and Big 5 Sporting Goods - joined the lineup.
Within a short span, the mall had become the area's default indoor commons: buy, browse, watch, snack, repeat.
2000s: Junior anchors and the power-center buildout
By the early 2000s, West Valley Mall started to feel less like just one building and more like the center of a growing group of stores.
In 2002, Barnes & Noble and Old Navy opened as junior anchors. Now, you could pick up a hardback and say it was for fun, or grab a sweater and call it a deal.
That same year, Best Buy and Cost Plus World Market opened nearby, making it even easier for shoppers to add one more stop to their list of errands.
This was also when the mall's regional argument became easier to make.
The surrounding area thickened into a dense power-center cluster: Costco and Walmart, Home Depot and Best Buy, World Market and HomeGoods, plus hotels, restaurants, and the Tracy Auto Mall.
The mall wasn't alone; it was the enclosed nucleus of the dominant retail node for Tracy and nearby communities.
For people driving on I-205, the mall made it easy to stop, shop, grab a meal, and get back on the road without much fuss.
For locals, it was a one-stop spot to visit all the big stores in the area, almost like sampling different brands at a buffet, even before buffets became popular news.
Target's 2005 makeover and the crash
In 2005, Target remodeled and made its Tracy store bigger. The change was about 15,000 square feet, mostly by turning the old outdoor Garden Center into an indoor shopping space.
This made the store feel more up-to-date for that time, when big stores were making their layouts more alike and trying to get more selling space out of the buildings they already had.
It also mattered for the mall because Target was one of the few stores that still seemed like a safe bet.
Then 2009 hit. Old Navy shut down at the mall because the company was cutting stores, not because Tracy stopped buying jeans.
Gottschalks closed for a harsher reason: bankruptcy and liquidation, which meant the entire chain was done.
Losing a department store anchor leaves a different kind of vacancy than losing a small shop. It's large, visible, and it changes how people talk about the place, even if the rest of the mall is still open.
After that, the mall's goal changed from growing to just hanging on. The main job was to keep the big spaces filled, so the mall still felt busy instead of empty.
Getting a new main store into the old Gottschalks spot was not about how the place felt.
It was about money, making deals, and whether the city and the owner would help make it work.
Macy's subsidy, empty spaces, hard news
In 2010, Macy's opened in the former Gottschalks space, a backfill arranged with subsidies from both the City of Tracy and the mall's then-owner, General Growth Properties.
The detail matters because it shows the mall's role as civic infrastructure: not quite a park, not quite a public building, yet treated as something worth stabilizing with public help.
The city and the owner were, in effect, underwriting the idea of an enclosed center as a local anchor of its own.
The 2010s brought turnover that felt less like a strategic remix and more like a patchwork quilt.
Ross Dress for Less closed at the mall in 2012, relocating elsewhere in Tracy; its old space became a local furniture store, remembered by visitors as Homelife Furniture.
Barnes & Noble closed in 2013. On December 20 of that year, a shooting was reported near the eastern entrance; no injuries were reported, and the accused shooter was apprehended shortly afterward.
It was the kind of event malls never advertise yet cannot fully escape: the reminder that "public place" includes the public's rougher moods.
In 2014, Sports Authority opened in the former Barnes & Noble space. In 2016, Sports Authority liquidated and closed.
Fit Republic later occupied the space and later closed, too. The mall's story was increasingly told through what used to be where.
Sears announced on November 7, 2019, that it would close its West Valley Mall store, and the location shut down in February 2020.
A mall that rents memories as much as space
Today, West Valley Mall is still an indoor mall with one floor and about 740,000 square feet. It has over 50 stores and dining.
The mall is owned and run by Namdar Realty Group, and leasing and property work is handled by Mason Asset Management and The Econic Company.
Leasing brochures call it "the only enclosed mall within a 25-mile radius," located about an hour east of San Francisco and San Jose, next to a busy part of I-205 that sees about 115,000 cars each day.
The brochures also highlight a mix of big stores and smaller buildings, and it is true that the mall still brings in a lot of people.
The real experience is more complex and, in some ways, more charming. Visitors say the inside looks "stuck in the 1990s," with neon and pastel tiles that never switched to plain beige.
Some people think it looks old; others see it as an unplanned museum of mall hopefulness.
The stores include well-known chains like Bath & Body Works, Hot Topic, Zumiez, Claire's, Finish Line, and Shoe Palace, along with smaller, more local shops like Geek Guy, Sapphire & Sage, and many different services.
The directory even lists a Tracy Police office and includes Animal Rescue of Tracy, as if the mall has taken on a bigger role in the community than just shopping.
The corridor's next act: diners and grocers
If the mall's interior tells a story about persistence, the surrounding corridor tells a story about reinvestment - not always in the enclosed format, but in the district's gravitational pull.
The promotional materials describe a trade area with about 117,400 people within five miles, median household incomes hovering around the low six figures, depending on the ring, and thousands of businesses employing tens of thousands of workers nearby.
The point is not subtle: the money is here, the rooftops are growing, and the node still matters.
West Valley Mall's anchors now read like a modern compromise between legacy and value: Target (an original anchor), Macy's (in the former Gottschalks box), Cinemark Movies 14, Hobby Lobby (opened October 1, 2021, in the former JCPenney), Burlington (opened November 17, 2023, in the former Barnes & Noble-Sports Authority-Fit Republic box, with no interior mall access), and Falling Prices as a liquidation-style large box within the complex.
The asterisks in site plans matter, too: some big boxes are noted as not owned by mall ownership, a quiet reminder that today's "mall" is often a negotiated ecosystem of parcels rather than a single landlord's kingdom.
The recent years also brought harder headlines.
On March 21, 2024, Don Roberto Jewelers inside the mall was robbed in the afternoon by eight masked suspects using hammers to smash cases; police said about $150,000 in jewelry was stolen, and four suspects were arrested after a crash near the mall's east entrance, with the investigation continuing.
And yet the corridor keeps adding reasons to visit: BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse opened next to the mall on August 26, 2024, and Trader Joe's opened its first Tracy store on June 13, 2025, at 2530 Naglee Road, described as directly in front of the mall.
The City of Tracy had said, that the opening was part of efforts to revitalize the mall area. The future, here, is not a single dramatic redevelopment.
It is the slower accumulation of diners, grocers, and errands - the same old retail engine, just tuned for a different decade.
