An Olympic-sized ice rink and a public library branch once occupied the interior of the mall at 12000 SE 82nd Avenue in Happy Valley. Both are gone.
Clackamas Town Center opened on March 6, 1981, with five department-store anchors and amenities no straightforward retail center would have needed.
Its 1.4 million square feet now holds about 155 stores, a 20-screen cinema, and outdoor restaurant streets built during a $100 million renovation.
The MAX Green Line connects it to downtown Portland through a transit center where Interstate 205 meets SE Sunnyside Road, and occupancy has held at or above 85 percent.
What Stood Here Before the Parking Lots
Before a single concrete pillar went into the ground at 12000 SE 82nd Avenue, the land between Milwaukie and Happy Valley was a tangle of blackberry bushes and scrub brush.
Not abandoned farmland or a forgotten industrial yard - a future high school. The North Clackamas School District had held the property for years, planning a fourth campus to serve a growing county.
A school bond failed at the ballot, and the district's plans folded with it.
In 1973, the school district sold the parcel to Coldwell Banker for $805,000. Fred Meyer had also pursued the property but lost.
The site was not a natural choice for a regional mall. It sat at the edge of a commercial district that did not yet exist.
The developers who eventually assembled the land had to acquire additional surrounding acreage. The footprint they were building toward would eventually reach 1.4 million square feet.
Roads, transit lines, overpasses, and a full urban-renewal district would all follow from that single 1973 sale.
The North Clackamas School District received $805,000 for a parcel that would anchor a retail zone eventually worth hundreds of millions.
Clackamas Town Center's Long Road Through Permits and Protests
The mall was originally scheduled to open in 1976. That year came and went. Then 1977. Then 1978.
The project moved through land-use review, rezoning fights, regulatory requirements, and sustained public opposition for years before a shovel broke ground.
Support came from county planning officials, the Milwaukie city government, the North Clackamas Chamber of Commerce, and a local citizens committee.
Their argument was practical: jobs, a bigger tax base, and an organized commercial center instead of more scattered strip development.
Opposition came from neighborhood groups and environmental advocates raising concerns about traffic, noise, pollution, and the effect on nearby businesses.
A poll in Happy Valley counted 118 people in favor and 102 opposed.
The Clackamas County Board approved the comprehensive-plan decision in 1975 by a 2-1 vote.
In 1976, state environmental approval allowed 6,500 parking spaces with conditions: mass-transit improvements, bus shelters, and specific road work.
A court ruling then reversed the approval and sent it back because the county's findings were inadequate for review. The county revised the plan and rezoned the area. Only then could construction proceed.
The regulatory battles forced the project to absorb transit requirements and road commitments that a less-contested development might have avoided.
Ernest W. Hahn and The Hahn Company developed the project with John Graham and Company of Seattle handling the original design.
The five-year gap between the original opening date and the actual opening date produced a mall with 6,500 parking spaces and bus infrastructure built into its approval from the start.
Opening Day, 1981: The Mall That Had Everything
Clackamas Town Center opened on March 6, 1981, and took its place among Oregon's largest shopping centers.
Five anchors - JCPenney, Meier & Frank, Nordstrom, Sears, and Montgomery Ward - held the ends and stretches of the two-level enclosed corridors.
Specialty stores filled in between them. The original build cost about $125 million.
The developers gave the place more than racks, counters, and cash registers. A Clackamas County branch library took space inside the mall.
A five-screen theater pulled visitors in after the shopping bags were full. Community rooms gave local groups a place to sit down and meet.
Three carved cedar trees, each more than 30 feet high, rose in the interior common area. At the center, an Olympic-sized ice rink opened the view from the surrounding levels.
That rink did real work for the mall. It drew people through the doors on a February Tuesday afternoon when nobody needed a new pair of shoes.
Parents brought children to skate, not to shop. It also put the center into the margins of sports history.
Tonya Harding trained there in the late 1980s, before she reached her national title. In 1991, she won the U.S. Figure Skating Championship.
The Ice Rink, the Trees, and What the Makeovers Took Away
In 1994, the original ice rink was renovated and renamed the Dorothy Hamill Skating Centre. The name change came 18 years after Dorothy Hamill had won her Olympic gold medal in Innsbruck.
The rink closed in 2003. Operating expenses and competition from other skating facilities ended it.
The library branch that had given the mall a civic identity since 1981 closed in 1996 and relocated northeast of the center.
The three carved cedar trees stood until 2004, when they were removed during a major interior makeover. No public farewell, no ceremony.
They were simply gone, replaced by updated commercial finishes that matched what regional malls looked like in the mid-2000s rather than 1981.
Montgomery Ward went bankrupt in 2001, and its Clackamas store closed with the chain. That was the first of the original five anchors to go.
Meier & Frank eventually became Macy's as part of a nationwide conversion that eliminated one of Oregon's most recognized retail names.
By the mid-2000s, the mall was operating as a more conventional enclosed center - no civic amenities, no ice, no trees, four anchors where five had stood.
A $100 million renovation followed, completed in the late 2000s, adding about 245,000 square feet and roughly 40 stores and restaurants.
Two outdoor lifestyle villages opened on the southern side of the enclosed mall. A 20-screen Century Theatre opened on December 21, 2007, replacing the five-screen enclosed-mall cinema with a full multiplex.
A New Rail Line and the District Built Around One Mall
The urban-renewal district surrounding the mall was established in 1980, before the center even opened.
It covered 819 acres around Interstate 205 and SE Sunnyside Road. Its frozen assessed value at creation was about $32 million.
By the 2009-2010 tax year, that figure had grown to about $607 million, with about $575 million in new growth. The district was credited with 26,250 jobs over its lifespan.
Road construction, frontage roads, the Monterey Avenue overpass, the Sunnybrook corridor, and connections to public facilities all ran through that district.
So did Kaiser-related medical facilities, Clackamas Community College expansions, the North Clackamas Aquatic Park, and the Sheriff's North Precinct.
On September 12, 2009, the MAX Green Line opened. The line ran 8.3 miles through 20 stations, connecting Clackamas Town Center with Portland State University through southeast Portland and the city center.
The transit center at 9225 SE Sunnyside Road tied MAX service to 11 bus routes and a 750-space structured parking facility.
The Clackamas Regional Center Mobility Improvements project, funded through the urban-renewal district, later added work on Harmony Road, Sunnyside Road, SE 80th Avenue, SE 82nd Avenue, and several intersections.
A slip lane from the southbound Interstate 205 off-ramp into the mall was removed to reduce parking-lot congestion and improve pedestrian conditions.
The total cost for that completed mobility project was about $23.8 million.
December 11, 2012: Inside the Mall During the Shooting
The holiday shopping season brings some of the highest traffic counts of the year to any regional mall.
Thousands of people were inside Clackamas Town Center on December 11, 2012, when a 22-year-old man entered carrying a stolen AR-15-style rifle, wearing a hockey-style mask and a load-bearing vest.
He shot and killed two people and seriously wounded a third, who was transported to a trauma center. He died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. No motive was determined.
The mall closed while law enforcement secured the building. The Town Center sign along Sunnyside Road became a memorial site in the days that followed, covered in flowers and notes from the surrounding communities.
Among the people inside the mall that afternoon was another 22-year-old legally carrying a concealed firearm.
He drew his weapon and aimed at the shooter, but held his fire because a bystander was in the line of sight. Accounts differ on the exact sequence of events in those final minutes.
Both people who were killed had already been shot before he drew his weapon.
Sears Closes, Nordstrom Leaves, and the Vacancy Question
Sears closed at Clackamas Town Center in November 2018, ending a presence that had started on opening day in 1981 - 37 years as one of the five original anchors.
The former Sears building at 11800 SE 82nd Avenue is physically attached to the regional mall but legally separate, with its own ownership, financing, and leasing history.
Dick's Sporting Goods moved into part of that space and opened in October 2020.
The remaining footprint included two ground-level retail areas totaling about 30,400 square feet and an upper-level commercial area of about 64,400 square feet.
That upper level stayed vacant.
Nordstrom closed its Clackamas store in 2020, part of a plan to close 16 stores nationwide during the COVID-19 retail disruption.
A Sky Zone active-entertainment location was planned for the former Nordstrom area, listing Happy Valley, Oregon, as its address.
As of April 2026, the location is still listed as "Coming Soon."
The former Sears property was sold in 2023. JCPenney and Macy's remained from the original 1981 anchor lineup.
REI, Barnes & Noble, Dave & Buster's, and The Cheesecake Factory filled the current large-format and restaurant tenant mix.
The center listed about 155 stores in its current leasing materials.
A $191 Million Loan and What the Numbers Actually Show
In 2024, a $191.4 million mortgage linked to Clackamas Town Center was handed over to special management after a large final payment was missed.
The loan started at about $216 million in 2012, was divided into two parts, and sold as part of a commercial mortgage-backed securities trust.
In early 2025, the property's estimated value was about $230 million. In October 2022, it was estimated at about $342 million. A credit analysis gave an even lower value of about $184 million.
The financial problems did not mean the building was empty. Occupancy stayed at or above 96 percent for several years.
At the end of 2023, net cash flow was about $22.5 million, slightly less than $23.1 million the year before.
The mall was making enough money to cover its debt payments more than twice over. The issue was that the loan had come due when lenders were being more strict about mall properties used as loan security.
The Macy's, Macy's Home Store, and JCPenney buildings were not included in the loan security; each was owned on its own.
Talks with the lender went on into 2025. The 20-screen theater, the transit center at 9225 SE Sunnyside Road, and about 155 stores were still open.
