Cielo Vista Mall opened on El Paso's East Side in 1974, with two enclosed levels beside Interstate 10, and Dillard's opened its 28th store there that first day.
By the 1980s, the place had a nightlife. A pub inside booked a dance band on several nights with no cover, and in 1986 a club in the west parking lot turned away anyone in jeans or under 23.
In 2011 people lined up inside before dawn, with the doors open at 5 a.m., for El Paso's first Apple store. In 2015, Simon announced a new wing with room for 35 to 40 more shops, but the wait for that wing ran into 2026.
Sears, meanwhile, is still open here, with a new Primark upstairs, even as many Sears stores across the country have already closed.
Dillard's opens beside Interstate 10
On November 13, 1974, Dillard's opened its 28th store beside Interstate 10 in east El Paso.
The store was part of Cielo Vista Mall, which began business that day at 8401 Gateway Boulevard West in El Paso, Texas: a two-level, climate-controlled enclosed shopping center that Melvin Simon & Associates had built near Hawkins Boulevard.
The houses got there first.
Lots in the Cielo Vista neighborhood were laid out in the early 1950s, the first homes went up in 1953, W.H. Burges High School opened in 1955, and during the 1960s Hawkins, Airway, Viscount, and Edgemere were pushed through what was then the city's eastern growth area.
The mall followed the homes and the roads to a spot about 10 miles east of downtown, beside a highway and well away from the older shopping district at the city's center.
Northgate Mall, open since 1960, had been El Paso's largest shopping center.
From 1974 it faced an enclosed rival out on the interstate, and once Bassett Center was converted into an indoor mall, it faced two.
Sunland Park Mall opens on the West Side
Within a few years the mall held more than stores. In 1978 an El Paso women's club moved its haunted house into Cielo Vista.
Putney Street Pub, inside the mall, was booking the Moon Pie Dance Band on several nights in January 1980 and charging no cover.
By December 1986 Studebaker's was open in the west parking lot at 1170 Sunmount, built around 1960s music and decor, with a free buffet in the early evening and a cover of $1 or $2.
Its door had rules of its own: no jeans, no athletic shoes, and nobody under 23.
The same developer had a second El Paso mall in the works the whole time.
Melvin Simon & Associates announced a West Side project in 1975, and it was delayed again and again before construction finally began in 1986.
Until it opened, West Side shoppers drove across town to Cielo Vista or Bassett Center.
Sunland Park Mall held its grand opening on August 31, 1988, and more than 40,000 people came that night.
The West Side had a Simon mall of its own.
A second Dillard's, then a Macy's
In 1987 Dillard's bought the Joske's chain, and the Joske's store at Cielo Vista went over to the Dillard's name as Dillard's West.
That left one mall with two stores from the same company, and they divided the goods between them.
Dillard's North carried the women's departments and furniture; Dillard's West took men's, children's, and home.
The enclosed mall around them went through a substantial renovation around 1993.
By 1996 its big stores were the two Dillard's, JCPenney, Montgomery Ward, and Sears, and about 90 percent of the leasable space was filled.
Simon held the whole property, partly on land it owned and partly on ground it leased.
Of those five anchors, Montgomery Ward went first.
The chain was liquidated nationwide in 2001, and its Cielo Vista store closed with the rest.
By 2004 Foley's was trading at that end of the mall.
Simon Property Group, the company Melvin Simon & Associates had grown into, gave the enclosed mall a complete renovation in 2005, with the work set to wrap up that October.
It also put a 14-screen Cinemark in the west outer lot, scheduled for February 2006 and showing films by the end of that March.
Over the renovation year, the mall's leasable area grew from about 1.19 million square feet at the end of 2004 to about 1.24 million at the end of 2005.
The Foley's name lasted until 2006.
After the Federated and May department-store companies merged, the Foley's signs at Cielo Vista came down for Macy's that September.
By the fall the end of the mall that had belonged to Montgomery Ward was a Macy's.
Apple arrives, and the 2015 expansion stalls
On September 17, 2011, the mall unlocked its doors at 5 a.m. so a line could form for a store that would not open until 10.
It was Apple's first store in El Paso.
When the project was first discussed in June 2011, the opening was expected in early 2012, and it arrived that September.
The next big arrival on this stretch of the interstate went up outside the mall.
In September 2013 the first tenants opened at The Fountains at Farah, an open-air center close by on the other side of Interstate 10, and the center held its official opening that November.
It brought about 500,000 to 600,000 square feet of stores and restaurants, among them Best Buy, Dick's Sporting Goods, Barnes & Noble, and TJ Maxx with HomeGoods, to the same East Side retail district.
At the end of that year about 98 percent of Cielo Vista's leasable space was filled. At the end of 2014 every space was taken.
In May 2015 Simon announced plans for more: a 125,000-square-foot addition, planned for three or four restaurants and about 35 to 40 more specialty shops.
On a mall of about 1.25 million square feet, it would have added about a tenth.
The drawings shown to the public reworked the areas around both Dillard's buildings and added a new retail wing.
Construction was set to begin in January 2016, and the whole project was expected to take about two years.
January 2016 came and went without a start.
By that June the expansion had been delayed, and both Dillard's buildings stood as they had before the drawings were shown.
Primark takes the Sears upper floor
Sears remained one of the mall's major anchors through 2020.
In June 2019 it was using both floors of its building: clothing filled the ground floor, and the upper floor held appliances, mattresses, an optical counter, tools, and toys.
The holidays brought their own programs to the common areas.
On Halloween 2019 participating stores handed out treats, and on Halloween 2022 the shops opened to free trick-or-treating for two hours in the late afternoon, each store taking part marked at its entrance.
In 2023 Santa's photo station stood on the lower level near JCPenney from mid-November through Christmas Eve, with one quiet, sensory-friendly morning in December and evenings set aside for pet photos.
In June 2024 a project was registered to divide the Sears building into shell space for two retailers and to patch and repaint its outside walls.
The work was scheduled from that July into January 2025. Primark was announced for late summer 2025, and it kept that date.
The retailer cut its ribbon and opened the upper floor at 11 a.m. on September 4, 2025, with a DJ, local treats, and giveaways for the first weekend.
Sears kept the ground floor of the building it had once filled.
Cielo Vista Mall in 2026
An old Sears sign still leaves a ghost on the outside wall.
Inside, Sears trades on the ground floor beneath Primark, with merchandise sparse across the space it still occupies.
The rest of the mall keeps changing tenants.
The Disney Store was set to close by late March 2021 as Disney cut its North American stores, and in 2022 several small suites were filled again, with a Lovisa jewelry store, a Men's District suit shop, and a Verde Salad Co. next to Chick-fil-A among the new arrivals.
JD Sports opened in October 2024, and Mango opened downstairs that November, beside lululemon.
By March 2025 Fun Spot Arcade was open upstairs next to Spencer's, and that summer it became Chuck's Arcade.
A Jasper T. Jowls figure from Chuck E. Cheese was displayed there near the Sears end of the mall.
Palenque Grill was announced for late March 2025 at the south entrance and opened that summer.
Red Lobster served its last day in March 2026, when its lease ended, and Texas de Brazil has been announced for its place.
Coach has been announced for lululemon's former pop-up space.
Lululemon itself moved into a full-size store in 2026 after two years in the temporary one.
Both Dillard's, JCPenney, and Macy's at the old Ward end are open, with Apple, which remodeled its store in 2023, among the shops between them.
The mall keeps its two enclosed levels and the name it opened under.
The food court sits upstairs by the west entrance, with Sbarro and Charleys Philly Steaks among the places to eat; Churro Time is downstairs.
A fountain runs on the lower level across from Dillard's North, and the Cinemark 14 in the west lot shows films in auditoriums with stadium seating and recliners.
Simon Property Group runs it.
The wing Simon announced in 2015, with room for 35 to 40 more shops, has not been built.
The new stores of the 2020s moved into the building that already stood, and nearly every space in it is leased.
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