The Outlet Collection Seattle sits at the interchange of State Routes 167 and 18 in Auburn, Washington. It's an enclosed mall with more than 100 businesses in it. Its single largest space is now a sports complex.
The mall opened in 1995 as SuperMall of the Great Northwest, built around big-box anchors rather than department stores. The largest of those anchors sold electronics. It failed within two years, and a Sam's Club took the building in 1999.
Sam's Club closed in January 2018. The room stayed empty until fall 2020, when a sports operator took it over and put basketball and volleyball courts on the floor, on a lease running to 2035.
Nothing about the arrangement is temporary. The mall was 98 percent leased at its last public count, and only a sixth of that space was occupied by tenants signed for short terms.
The SuperMall opened without a department store
SuperMall of the Great Northwest opened Friday, August 25, 1995, in Auburn, Washington, midway between Seattle and Tacoma at State Routes 167 and 18.
The opening-era figure put the complex at 1.2 million square feet, with about 160 stores.
Today it trades as The Outlet Collection Seattle, an enclosed outlet and value retail center. It opened without a traditional department-store anchor.
The big boxes went to specialty and off-price chains.
Nordstrom Rack opened the largest Rack the company had built, and Bed Bath & Beyond opened its first Washington store.
Incredible Universe sold electronics and appliances, Oshman's SuperSports USA sold sporting goods, and Burlington Coat Factory and Marshalls handled off-price apparel.
Management was chasing tour traffic hard enough to plan for 2,000 to 4,000 buses a year.
Drivers had their own lounge with a VCR and movies, while tour leaders got a free lunch and soft drinks.
Elsewhere, shoppers had the food court, carousel, children's play areas, kiosks, salons, and banks meant to keep them around.
By the first anniversary, the store count had reached 175 and about 14 million people had come through.
Before opening, mall officials had publicly forecast about 15 million visitors a year. The rooms didn't hold up evenly.
Incredible Universe was struggling and had handed its computer department to fellow Tandy chain Computer City, while Oshman's said sales had beaten expectations and Bed Bath & Beyond said business was good.
Act III opens 17 screens in December 1996
Another big addition to the site wasn't built for retail. Act III Theatres opened Cinema 17 at the SuperMall on December 20, 1996.
Its 3,674 seats were divided among 17 auditoriums, making it Washington's largest multiplex at the time.
The aviation theme started underfoot, with runway-style lights across the floor, while the lobby itself took its cues from an aircraft hangar.
Regal acquired Act III in 1998 and took over the theatre. It's still showing first-run movies in 2026 as Regal Auburn - Washington.
Most of the big rooms that opened with the mall have changed hands or changed purpose since. The cinema has done the same job for 30 years.
Incredible Universe leaves, Sam's Club moves in
Incredible Universe closed in 1997 when the chain behind it failed, and the mall was left holding about 154,000 square feet, its largest single room, with nothing in it.
Saks Fifth Avenue Off 5th went too, gone by 1998.
Glimcher Realty Trust took control of the property in January 1998, and the room stayed shut into 1999.
What opened in it was a Sam's Club, a membership warehouse club with no relationship to the outlet stores around it.
Shoppers needed a card to get through the door of a mall that charged nobody anything.
The building itself barely changed.
The Incredible Universe shape stayed identifiable from outside after the conversion, so the room kept the outline of the store that had failed in it while a different kind of business ran inside.
Auburn threatens a permit over an empty box
The building Walmart left behind sat west of the mall with nothing in it for nearly two years, and the City went to court to make sure it didn't stay that way.
In 2006 Auburn, Walmart, and Glimcher had signed an agreement covering the move.
Mayor Pete Lewis later described it as requiring action within 90 days of the new store opening: tear down and redevelop the old building, or sign a replacement tenant the City would accept.
The new store opened in 2010, a 208,000-square-foot Supercenter with a grocery and a pharmacy in it, built north of the cinema.
The old one stayed shut through the 90 days and through the year after that.
By 2011 Auburn was threatening to revoke the occupancy permit on the new Supercenter, which would have closed a store doing business to force a decision about one that wasn't.
The mayor signed a settlement with Walmart in June 2011 instead.
Coastal Farm & Ranch bought the old building, was more than halfway through the renovation by April 2012, and opened that June with about 40 people working in it.
SuperMall becomes The Outlet Collection
By 2012 the owner had decided the mall's mix of full-price, value, outlet, and specialty stores was no longer the format it wanted to run.
Glimcher announced the change in May, started work that September, and spent $35 million over 13 months.
On February 28, 2013, workers took down the artificial Mount Rainier that had stood at the southeast entrance since 1995 under the mall's Great Outdoors theme.
The food court came out of its old position and reopened as the Dining Emporium, somewhere people could see it, with D'Lara Mediterranean Grill, Villa Italian Kitchen, and Dairy Queen/Orange Julius in it.
D'Lara and the Dairy Queen counter are still there in 2026.
The work added a soft-play area for children and Wi-Fi through the building, and it brought in factory stores to replace the mix that had been there.
The SuperMall name came off and The Outlet Collection Seattle went on. Occupancy had been 89 percent before the project. It was 95 percent after.
Two anchors go, sports and arcades take over
Sports Authority shut its Auburn store in 2016 when the chain liquidated, and the old Oshman's building went quiet.
Marshalls left its space somewhere in the same stretch. The Marshalls room didn't come back as a shop.
Dave & Buster's opened in the former Marshalls space in November 2017.
About 16,000 square feet went to arcade games, and the build-out also included a commercial kitchen and a bar with 35 seats.
Sam's Club closed on January 26, 2018, which emptied the old electronics building for the second time in 21 years.
FieldhouseUSA was announced for it in February 2019 and opened there in October 2020.
Its roughly 154,300-square-foot lease runs through December 2035, with two five-year options after that.
Part of the space is subleased to Fitness Quest and Big Air Trampoline Park.
FieldhouseUSA itself has basketball and volleyball courts, while its programs also include soccer, flag football, futsal, camps, training, tournaments, and birthday parties.
Average occupancy across the mall in 2020 was 78.2 percent.
What The Outlet Collection Seattle holds now
Bed Bath & Beyond closed in early 2023 after about 27 years in the building, the latest of the 1995 anchors to go.
A Best Buy Outlet took a 50,000-square-foot space on a lease through March 2028, but Best Buy now marks the Auburn location closed.
The old Sports Authority building went the other way: Dick's Warehouse Sale was trading in it by March 2022 and isn't in the current directory.
The rest of the mix stopped reading like a mall directory a while ago.
Alongside Nike, Coach, Michael Kors, and Old Navy sit a driving school, a phone repair counter, a bridal shop, the Auburn Valley Humane Society Cat Cafe, and the Community Convention Center in Suite 1108, which runs markets, classes, and tournaments from 11 in the morning.
At Discount Collection Depot the bins reset at $9 on Saturday and drop by the day until whatever's left goes for $1 on Friday.
Lightstone bought the mall for $82 million in November 2024 and started on furniture, lighting, signs, and a digital billboard out on the highway.
The rent roll that September read 98 percent leased across 100+ tenants.
Of those, 31 were temporary, holding 162,300 square feet, or 17.8 percent of the place.
Burlington and Nordstrom Rack are still trading, 31 years in. The old Sam's Club is full of basketball courts.
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