Gateway Mall stands in Springfield, Oregon, in Lane County, in the Gateway area just east of Eugene. It is part of the city's main Gateway retail district.
The site runs along Interstate 5 at Gateway Street, a busy commercial route that connects Springfield to the larger Willamette Valley road network and I-5 traffic.
The mall opened in 1990 as a fully enclosed complex. It covers about 833,000 square feet and serves as the leading retail destination in the Gateway district, bringing in shoppers from Springfield, Eugene, and nearby parts of Lane County.
It was the only major enclosed mall built in the Eugene-Springfield area after Valley River Center. Over time, the property was redeveloped into an open-air power center and now operates under the name The Shoppes at Gateway.
Gateway Mall: Springfield's Major Retail Project in 1990
Stand at the corner of Gateway Street and Interstate 5 in Springfield, Oregon, and you are looking at a property that has been rebuilt at least once without ever being torn down completely.
The original enclosed mall opened in 1990 with Sears, Target, and The Emporium as anchors. A food court was part of the interior. A Carl's Jr. opened in that food court on March 14, 1990.
Getting to that opening took two years of city negotiations. Springfield officials reviewed Gateway Mall's proposal in 1988 and insisted on unusual authority over which anchor tenants could occupy the site.
They did not want the property to break apart into an uncoordinated strip-mall cluster. The city wanted a true regional center.
The development was budgeted at roughly $70 million, and planners expected it to drive growth across the entire Gateway district.
The construction timeline ran from 1989 to 1990 before the center opened to the public in 1990.
The timing was awkward. The Eugene-Springfield retail market had not generated enough sales growth after Valley River Center's opening to comfortably support two large enclosed malls.
Gateway Mall opened anyway, and it became the dominant commercial attraction in the eastern part of the metro.
Gateway Mall's 1998, 1999, and 2006 Expansions, and The Emporium's Exit
The mall that opened in 1990 did not stay the same shape for long. Three separate expansion phases followed: 1998, 1999, and 2006.
By 2000, the total gross leasable area stood at 631,500 square feet, with no vacancies.
The Emporium was still among the anchors at that point, alongside Sears and Target. But The Emporium would later disappear from the Gateway tenant roster.
When it disappeared from the Gateway tenant roster, the space was filled by a completely different kind of operator.
The center's 2005 profile included 24 Hour Fitness, Movies 12 - a 12-screen discount theater - Ross Dress for Less, Sears, and Target, with total square footage now at 725,700 and one vacancy on the books.
Regional centers across the country went through the same substitution in the late 1990s and early 2000s as traditional department store chains consolidated or collapsed.
At Gateway, the replacements kept vacancy numbers low and square footage growing.
The 2006 expansion added the final major increment of space before the property later reached 833,000 square feet.
How the Anchor Roster Changed Before De-Malling
By 2009, the total gross leasable area had reached 817,000 square feet. Ashley Furniture Homestore and Kohl's had joined the roster.
Oz Fitness was operating alongside surviving earlier tenants. Movies 12 remained in place. Sears and Target had not left.
The mix at that point - big-box furniture, a national department store, a fitness operator, a discount theater, and two mass-market retailers - was about as far from the original Emporium-anchored format as the center could get without tearing walls down.
A year later, the total had grown again to 819,000 square feet, with Kohl's, Sears, and Target as the three primary anchors.
The center had absorbed multiple anchor departures across the decade and replaced them, though at least one vacancy did show up in annual occupancy figures.
By 2011, the center had reached 817,600 square feet, with anchors including Cinemark 17, Kohl's, Ross, Sears, and Target, and two theaters combined running 29 total screens.
That was the peak of the enclosed-mall version. The food court that had been there since March 1990 was still operating. Within two years, Rouse Properties would submit plans to demolish it.
Rouse Properties, the Cabela's Opening, and Gateway Mall's 2012 Leasing Gap
General Growth Properties announced in 2011 that it would spin off 30 malls, including Gateway Mall, into a new company, Rouse Properties.
The spin-off was completed in January 2012. That same year, on May 5, Cabela's opened at the center. The outdoor retailer moved into about 55,000 square feet that Ashley Furniture had previously used.
It was the only Cabela's store in Oregon at the time, and its opening sales came in higher than expected.
In early 2012, Gateway Mall totaled 818,000 square feet of gross leasable area. Of that space, 89.2% was leased, and 81.3% was occupied.
The gap of about eight percentage points was not severe, but it was meaningful. Even with signed leases, nearly 20% of the space was empty at any given time.
Rouse had acquired a property that looked stable in reports but did not perform as well in day-to-day use.
Those figures also revealed a structural issue. The mall had been designed around anchor tenants such as Sears and Target, while The Emporium was no longer there.
New tenants filled the empty spaces, but they did not bring in the same level of customer traffic.
De-Malling Gateway: From Mall to Power Center
In 2013, Rouse submitted conceptual redevelopment plans to Springfield.
The core proposal was demolition of the food court and the 12-screen discount theater, replaced by large retailers opening directly to the outside along a new outdoor walkway.
The project language was blunt: de-mall the center and construct new exterior-facing junior boxes for Marshalls, Hobby Lobby, Petco, and new outparcels.
The total estimated project cost was $45.2 million, with $37.2 million spent by December 31, 2015.
To finance it, Rouse removed the property from the 2013 Senior Facility collateral pool and placed a new $75 million non-recourse loan on it, fixed through an interest-rate swap at 3.6%, with an initial maturity in January 2020.
In January 2016 Rouse unveiled the project complete under a new name: The Shoppes at Gateway. The 820,000-square-foot center was 94% leased when it relaunched, and opening weekends produced record crowds and sales.
The tenant list included Cabela's, Target, Ulta, Kohl's, Hobby Lobby, Cinemark, Petco, Walmart Neighborhood Market, Marshalls, Ross, Ashley Furniture, Rack Room Shoes, Panera Bread, Noodles and Company, and Blaze Pizza.
Springfield's real market value for the property rose from about $83 million in 2015 to nearly $89 million in 2016.
Balboa's $107 Million Purchase and the Former Sears Vacancy
Balboa Retail Partners, a Los Angeles-based investment group, purchased The Shoppes at Gateway in March 2017 for approximately $107 million.
The sale covered about 609,000 square feet of the 821,000-square-foot center plus the land under Kohl's. Target's parcel was separately owned and did not change hands.
In January 2018, Sears announced it would close its Springfield store that spring, with liquidation beginning days later and the doors expected to shut by early April.
Sears had been one of the three original anchors since 1990, the same year Carl's Jr. opened in the food court. Its exit left a 119,555-square-foot box empty at a property that had just sold for nine figures.
That box did not get filled quickly. By 2022, The Shoppes at Gateway sat at 75.9% physically occupied, with a weighted-average in-place base rent of $13.2 per square foot.
Market rent at the time was $14 per square foot.
Balboa's plan at that point involved selling outparcels, splitting the former Sears box between two users, backfilling other vacancies, and combining some former inline space into a new junior-anchor box.
Phase 2: Crunch Fitness, Boot Barn, and a New Drive-Thru
In February 2024, Crunch Fitness signed for a 45,000-square-foot Springfield location inside the mall.
The Phase 2 capital program totaled $11 million and covered two parallel tracks.
It converted 54,000 square feet of former enclosed tenant and common area into the Crunch Fitness space and four exterior-facing shops.
It also carved two new box spaces out of another 44,000 square feet of former enclosed area.
A Boot Barn lease was in progress on additional space, and negotiations with an entertainment user were ongoing.
A Raising Cane's ground lease replaced the former Big 5 Sporting Goods location. The planned Raising Cane's will include a drive-thru.
On March 30, 2026, construction began at the recently demolished Big 5 site, with a fall 2026 opening targeted.
The former Sears anchor remained vacant at 119,500 square feet - eight years after it closed, and still the largest single unoccupied space on the property.
Occupancy, Traffic, and the Vacant Sears Box in 2025
The owned portion of The Shoppes at Gateway measured 697,000 square feet in 2025, with the full center covering 833,000 square feet.
Occupancy for the owned portion stood at 77.8%, and 81.4% for the entire center. The property drew 8.3 million visitors annually, up 16% year over year.
Among Oregon shopping centers ranked by foot traffic, The Shoppes at Gateway placed sixth.
The center's address is 3000 Gateway Street. It sits on 2,600 linear feet of Interstate 5 frontage.
The shadow-anchor Target on the separately owned parcel ranked as the highest-visited Target within a 50-mile radius.
The 119,500-square-foot Sears box sat empty while a Boot Barn lease was being finalized and an entertainment deal was still being negotiated.
Thirty-five years after a Carl's Jr. opened in the food court to mark the mall's first weeks of business, the food court itself no longer exists.
Notable Milestones
Late 1980s - Gateway Mall was planned as a major retail project in Springfield's Gateway district
1990 - Gateway Mall opened with Sears, Target, and The Emporium as original anchors
1998 - The mall underwent one of several later expansion phases
1999 - Another expansion increased the center's footprint and tenant capacity
2005 - The property had grown to about 725,738 square feet
2009 - The mall had expanded to more than 817,000 square feet with a broader big-box tenant mix
May 5, 2011 - Cabela's opened at the mall as its Oregon location
2011 - Gateway Mall was included in the Rouse Properties spin-off from General Growth
2013 - Redevelopment plans were submitted to convert parts of the enclosed mall into an outdoor retail format
2015 - Major demolition and "de-malling" work began, including the removal of the food court and old discount theater
January 2016 - The redeveloped center reopened as The Shoppes at Gateway
March 2017 - The property was sold to Balboa Retail Partners for about $107 million
April 2018 - Sears closed, ending the run of one of the mall's original anchors
2022 - The center was still being repositioned, with occupancy reported below full lease-up
February 2024 - Crunch Fitness announced a new 45,000-square-foot location at the center
2025 - Marketing materials showed continued redevelopment, a vacant former Sears space, and new leasing efforts, including Boot Barn and an entertainment user
March 30, 2026 - Construction began on a Raising Cane's at the former Big 5 site at The Shoppes at Gateway
