Columbia Center Mall, Kennewick, WA: Still Thriving Or Slipping?

Columbia Center is an enclosed regional mall at 1321 N. Columbia Center Blvd. in Kennewick, in the Tri-Cities of southeastern Washington, Benton County, remains a key retail hub.

It sits on Columbia Center Boulevard in Kennewick's retail corridor, where the mall anchors a district of shops, dining, and hotels, helping the wider commercial area grow around it later.

Columbia Center is the main indoor shopping center for the Tri-Cities, attracting shoppers from Kennewick, Pasco, Richland, and the surrounding southeastern Washington area for shopping, eating, services, and everyday needs.

It opened in October 1969 and became the first air-conditioned mall in eastern Washington and Oregon, later becoming southeastern Washington's largest regional mall and a lasting retail landmark for decades.

Columbia Center Mall in Kennewick, WA

The Mall That Opened With a 72-Degree Promise in 1969

In October 1969, promoters boldly called Columbia Center the "Manhattan of the Northwest." Full-page ads highlighted a key feature: an indoor space kept at a steady 72 degrees all year.

It created a controlled environment in a region where summer heat often rises above 100. At the time, no regional mall in eastern Washington or Oregon had air conditioning.

Columbia Center opened at 1321 N. Columbia Center Blvd. as a $20 million development with 55 stores.

JCPenney and The Bon Marche were among the anchor stores. Between them were shops like Zales, Weisfield Jewelers, and Orange Julius.

Mall leaders projected $25 million in sales during the first year, a big expectation for a retail area that had never seen anything like it.

Before construction, Columbia Center Boulevard had little development. Hotels, chain restaurants, and strip malls followed over the next twenty years.

The mall grew into the largest regional shopping center in southeastern Washington, a title it still held at its 50th anniversary.

By 2019, the mall supported about 3,500 jobs throughout the year and expanded to around 4,500 workers during the holiday season.

Columbia Center's First Big Expansion Came During a Downturn

The Hanford nuclear reservation, about 25 miles northwest of Kennewick, had driven much of the Tri-Cities economy since World War II.

When Hanford hit a contraction cycle in the mid-1980s, the regional economy softened with it. Columbia Center changed ownership in 1987. The 1988 expansion followed.

The expansion roughly doubled the mall's footprint. The original structure had been about half the size of what the 1988 phase produced.

The project moved forward under skepticism from people who thought the regional market couldn't support it.

Sears arrived as part of that expansion, along with Lamonts - a Pacific Northwest department store chain that later passed through Gottschalks before becoming the second Macy's location the mall carries today.

The two Macy's stores - one for women's apparel, one for men's and children's - have operated as separate anchor locations ever since.

After the mall expanded, the surrounding district filled in.

Retailers, restaurants, and hotels built up along Columbia Center Boulevard through the late 1980s and into the 1990s, making the street one of the most commercially dense corridors in southeastern Washington.

How Barnes and Noble and a Cinema Reshaped the Mall in 1997

In 1997, Simon added Barnes and Noble and ACT III Theater to Columbia Center, the mall's first major redevelopment since the 1988 expansion.

The project also created additional store space and built out the mall's southeast corner.

The theater became an eight-screen Regal Cinemas complex.

Barnes and Noble moved into a new freestanding-style space that opened directly to the parking lot as well as to the mall interior - a format that was becoming standard for large-format bookstores at the time.

Old Navy joined the same renovation phase. A Pay 'n Save that had previously occupied part of the site was removed to make room.

For roughly 20 years afterward, the mall's major tenants held: Macy's, JCPenney, Sears, Barnes and Noble, and Regal Cinema.

The theater closed in July 2018 after drawing audiences for two decades, and was later demolished for the Dick's Sporting Goods that replaced it.

Barnes and Noble is still open as of 2026.

The 2006-07 Expansion Added Outdoor Storefronts

Simon added an east-side exterior component to Columbia Center in 2006 and 2007, putting stores and restaurants in outward-facing spaces with their own entrances off the parking lot, separate from the enclosed mall corridor.

The industry term for the format was lifestyle retail - a concept designed to pull customers who preferred open-air shopping over traditional enclosed malls.

LOFT and Chico's were part of that phase. Twigs Bistro and Martini Bar later opened in that area.

The bistro brought a full-service restaurant with a bar program - an anchor dining tenant designed to draw evening traffic, adding another such option at the mall.

All three still operate at the property today.

Before 2006, Columbia Center was a standard enclosed regional mall with restaurant pad sites ringing the parking lot.

After the expansion, the property ran as a hybrid: enclosed retail in the original structure, exterior lifestyle storefronts on the east side, and pad restaurants on the perimeter.

That configuration made it structurally more similar to the open-air and mixed-use centers that were drawing customers away from traditional enclosed malls in other markets.

HomeGoods and DSW both occupy exterior-facing spaces in that portion of the property today.

Sears Closed, and a 160,000-Square-Foot Problem Appeared

On December 28, 2018, Sears Holdings listed the Columbia Center store among 80 locations it planned to close during bankruptcy.

The store shut down in March 2019, leaving behind a 160,000-square-foot empty anchor space on the mall's northwest side.

Around the same time, several other retailers closed in and around the Columbia Center area, including Shopko, Payless ShoeSource, and Toys R Us.

Other nearby retail closures during the broader 2015-2019 period included OfficeMax and Sports Authority.

None of those closures matched the size of the former Sears space, but together they reflected several years of store turnover across the wider Columbia Center retail area.

Simon Property Group began redeveloping available space by focusing first on the former theater.

Dick's Sporting Goods was publicly identified in October 2018 for the site previously occupied by Regal Cinemas. The project cost $7.5 million and created a 45,000-square-foot store.

Dick's opened in late September 2019, about 14 months after the theater closed the previous summer.

The former Sears building proved harder to reuse. In October 2022, Joann took over part of the space, building out about 23,000 square feet with entrances from both inside the mall and the parking lot.

The rest of the former Sears area, an L-shaped section estimated at well over 100,000 square feet, remained vacant.

Joann later announced on February 25, 2025, that it would close all U.S. stores, and the Columbia Center location shut down as part of that decision.

The COVID Shutdown and What the Mall Was Worth to the Tax Base

On March 19, 2020, Columbia Center closed. Simon shut the mall as COVID-19 restrictions tightened in Washington. The property went dark for 110 days.

When it reopened on July 7, 2020, indoor retail occupancy was capped at 15 percent, and visitors were limited to 30 minutes inside.

The children's play area stayed closed. Drinking fountains were shut off.

The property supported more than 1,500 jobs and generated $15.7 million in sales tax revenue annually. Property taxes from the site ran $830,000 per year.

Every retailer operating under 15 percent capacity was managing lines at the door.

The food court's indoor seating remained unavailable under the reopening rules. The 30-minute indoor limit made traditional browsing effectively impossible.

Capacity limits remained in place through the rest of 2020 as Washington moved through subsequent phases of its COVID-19 response.

The mall had been closed longer than any period since it opened in 1969.

Inside Columbia Center's First Major Renovation Since the 1990s

Crews had been tearing out the stage and fountain in front of Macy's since November 2024, before Simon said anything publicly about it.

Both fixtures had been there since the late 1990s.

New floors throughout, fresh paint, lighter colors, updated carpeting in the seating areas, and the stage and fountain removed - all confirmed in February 2025.

The last time the mall had done anything at this scale was when Barnes and Noble moved in.

Two days before that announcement, Joann announced it was closing every store in the country.

The Columbia Center location - carved out of the old Sears box in 2022, just under 30,000 square feet of it - shut down in the weeks that followed, leaving most of what Sears had vacated still sitting empty.

Forever 21 was already gone. It had finally opened near JCPenney in December 2021, three years late because of its own bankruptcy, then filed again in March 2025 and closed.

JD Sports pulled $832,500 in permits to take the space. An April 2026 opening was planned. It hadn't happened by mid-April 2026.

Lululemon opened on November 1, 2024. Golden Roll Sushi opened the next morning in the food court.

The Vault, an art gallery and artisan market with metal sculpture and paintings from regional makers, opened September 6, 2025.

Cafe con Arte put in a service window on November 5. Phase 2 of the renovation was still running in 2026 - food court, seating, restrooms.