Vancouver Mall sits in Vancouver, WA, within Clark County and the larger Portland metro area. It stands at the meeting point of Interstate 205 and State Route 500, a location planned early on as a center for suburban expansion.
It serves as the main enclosed shopping destination for Vancouver and nearby east-side communities. People come from across Clark County, and many also travel from Portland, OR.
The mall opened on August 17, 1977. It covers 929,000 square feet and includes about 120 stores, with Macy's, JCPenney, AMC, and Round1 as its anchor tenants.
For nearly five decades, it has remained the only enclosed regional mall in Vancouver. On a typical Saturday, it sees between 20,000 and 25,000 visitors.
Vancouver Mall Opens at Vancouver's Eastern Fringe
On August 17, 1977, a mall opened in a field.
Not in downtown Vancouver, Washington, not near any existing neighborhood center, but at the unfinished junction of Interstate 205 and State Route 500, on land that was not even inside the city limits.
It sat in unincorporated Clark County, surrounded by the kind of blank suburban geography that freeways were then creating all across America.
To mark the occasion, organizers planted a 50-foot oak tree on the southwest side of the property. That tree is still there.
Newman Properties of California and May Centers of St. Louis had announced the project in December 1972. The price tag was $50 million. The design called for a fully enclosed, two-level structure built in phases.
Transportation planners later identified the I-205 and SR-500 corridor as a major suburban growth zone, and the developers placed the mall exactly there to pull in cross-state traffic from Oregon as well as Vancouver's expanding east side.
Meier & Frank, Nordstrom, and Sears opened as the three original anchors. JCPenney joined during the second phase. A Lipman's had been planned but was never built; Mervyn's eventually filled that spot.
At about 467,900 leasable square feet in its first phase, the mall was built to serve a region, not a neighborhood.
How Vancouver Mall Became More Than a Mall
In November 1983, Fort Vancouver Regional Libraries opened a branch inside the building.
Over the following decades, that branch moved to a larger space in 1997, moved again in 2000, underwent a full remodel in 2013 under the name The Mall Library Connection, and was renamed Vancouver Mall Library in 2018.
The branch is still operating today.
The annexation question was settled in 1993.
The city of Vancouver and Clark County had been negotiating the mall's incorporation for years, and the Fourth Plain-Vancouver Mall agreement became the basis of one of Vancouver's most significant 1990s expansions.
The mall's address moved from unincorporated county land into the city.
In 1993, the same year as annexation, the mall added a food court and completed an interior renovation - the first substantial one since it opened.
The Westfield Years: Renaming, Macy's, and the Mervyn's Vacancy
CenterMark Properties, the successor to May Centers, sold the mall in 1994 as part of a 19-mall portfolio deal involving Westfield America Inc. and General Growth Properties.
The Westfield name did not appear on the building immediately.
Four years passed before the center was officially renamed "Westfield Shoppingtown Vancouver" in 1998, at which point it held 146 stores across 870,000 square feet.
The "Shoppingtown" portion was dropped in September 2005, making it Westfield Vancouver, though most residents kept calling it Vancouver Mall regardless.
The Westfield era brought one of the mall's most visible physical changes.
In 2005, May Department Stores began a 60,000-square-foot expansion of the Meier & Frank anchor, adding 30,000 square feet on each of two levels.
The work finished in 2006. The previous year, Federated Department Stores completed its acquisition of May, and in September 2006, the store that had opened as Meier & Frank in 1977 became Macy's.
One of the mall's three founding anchors had changed names and owners and grown by more than a third, all within a single construction cycle.
Mervyn's closed in January 2007.
Its 82,225-square-foot box sat empty while Westfield explored options, including a full expansion plan that would have replaced the space with additional retail, and a separate proposal for a lifestyle district.
Neither plan moved forward. By 2009, the mall was 17 percent vacant.
A Theater Fills the Gap, Then a Sale Changes Everything
The Mervyn's space stayed vacant for about four years before Cinetopia signed on.
On June 1, 2012, Cinetopia Vancouver Mall 23 began a phased opening in the former anchor, with a formal grand opening on June 22.
Around the same period, a broader renovation was completed throughout the rest of the mall: new floors, updated lighting, exterior entrance overhauls, and new escalators.
Nordstrom's exit came next. On February 5, 2014, Nordstrom announced it would close its Vancouver Mall location - one of its original 1977 tenants.
The store closed to the public in January 2015. Gold's Gym took the upper level of the former Nordstrom space; H&M moved into the lower level.
December 18, 2015, ended the Westfield branding chapter.
Centennial Real Estate Company, in a joint transaction with Montgomery Street Partners and USAA Real Estate, purchased five Westfield regional malls for $1.1 billion.
The Vancouver Mall portion of that deal cost $45 million. Every reference to Westfield was removed from the building and its online presence the same day, and the property returned to its original public name.
The Sears Building Gets a Second Life
In 2015, Sears Holdings moved the Vancouver Mall Sears property into Seritage Growth Properties. The store, at 8800 Northeast Vancouver Mall Drive, was listed at 129,700 square feet.
On August 22, 2018, Sears announced the Vancouver store would close as part of a plan to shut 46 locations. The store closed on November 25, 2018, after 41 years.
Seritage divided the existing building among Round1, Hobby Lobby, and additional retail and restaurant space, covering 72,400 square feet of work.
Hobby Lobby opened September 11, 2020, in a 51,000-square-foot space at Northeast 82nd Avenue and Northeast Vancouver Mall Drive.
Round1 held its formal grand opening on April 3, 2021. In 2022, the former Sears building and its land were sold to Allen Properties of Clackamas, Oregon, for $27.6 million.
Out in the parking lot, the same transformation was happening on a smaller scale.
Chick-fil-A opened in January 2021 in a freestanding building in the mall's southwest parking lot, near Macy's. Five Guys opened at 8440 Vancouver Mall Drive in September 2020.
Pandemic, Recovery, and an October Night in the Food Court
Vancouver Mall closed on March 19, 2020. It stayed closed until June 10, and when it reopened, limits were placed on how many people could be inside at one time.
Construction work at the mall stopped under a statewide work stoppage order, though that order was lifted within a month.
In late May, before the building reopened, some stores began offering curbside pickup.
By 2022, the mall had added new tenants and reported visitor numbers higher than before the pandemic.
New stores included Tillys, Windsor, Sephora, The Good Feet Store, and BoxLunch. A Sephora opened in 2022 in the former Sears auto center space.
In October 2020, the mall announced a small interior update that included new carpet, updated seating, and other minor cosmetic changes.
On October 31, 2024, a Halloween trick-or-treat event brought larger-than-usual crowds to the mall. At 7:27 p.m., the first of 82 calls reached 911.
Police responded to a shooting in the food court. One 26-year-old man was found dead, and two other people were injured.
Vancouver Police stated that the attack was targeted and identified a 32-year-old suspect.
He was arrested on November 2 and booked into Clark County Jail on one count of first-degree murder and two counts of first-degree assault.
What Vancouver Mall Looks Like in Early 2026
On a typical Saturday, between 20,000 and 25,000 people pass through Vancouver Mall.
The current anchor roster - Macy's, JCPenney, Gold's Gym, H&M, AMC Vancouver Mall 23, Hobby Lobby, Round1, and Old Navy - bears almost no resemblance to the 1977 lineup of Meier & Frank, Nordstrom, and Sears.
The Vancouver Mall Library remains inside the building. C-TRAN's Van Mall Transit Center operates immediately adjacent at 8600 NE Van Mall Drive. The property has 5,108 parking spaces.
By early 2024, the mall had shifted toward small and locally owned businesses as a core part of its tenant mix.
Kay Jewelers and Pandora were announced in February 2025 and opened later that year. JD Sports listed a Vancouver Mall location scheduled to open in April 2026.
