Fiesta Mall

Address: 1445 W Southern Ave, Mesa, AZ, 85202

Hours:

 

Fiesta Mall is a regional shopping center in the U.S. city of Mesa, Arizona (part of the Phoenix metropolitan area). Fiesta Mall is located at Alma School Road, Southern Avenue and the U.S. 60 (Superstition) freeway.

Fiesta Mall was originally developed by the Homart Development Company, which at the time was the real estate division of Sears, Roebuck and Company, and developer of several shopping centers nationwide, anchored by Sears retail locations.

Fiesta Mall opened in 1979, with a variety of shops. Homart Development Company and its mall properties were sold to General Growth Properties in 1995. Fiesta Mall was acquired by the Westcor division of The Macerich Company in 2004.

Fiesta Mall opened with four anchor department stores, Goldwaters (which became Robinsons-May in 1989 and changed to Macy's in 2006), Diamond's (now Dillards), The Broadway (which became Macy's in 1996, and closed in 2006 with the location now vacant, the store was 205,365 sq ft.) and Sears. It was one of the first major malls to be built in Mesa, which has traditionally been one of the nation's fastest growing areas. There are about 135 stores in the mall with a total area of 1,030,000 square feet (96,000 m²).

Fiesta's opening hastened the decline of Mesa's Main Street shopping corridor (although it has rebounded slightly since the 1990s with an emphasis on locally-owned boutiques and related shops). Fiesta Mall itself has seen some decline since the 1990 opening of Superstition Springs Center in east Mesa, the 1997 opening of nearby Arizona Mills (located in Tempe) and especially the 2001 opening of Chandler Fashion Center, which siphoned off a great deal of Fiesta Mall's sales. Fiesta Mall underwent a renovation in 2000 in part to try to reverse the trend.

The demographics around Fiesta Mall have changed as the west Mesa area has become less upscale and more blue-collar in nature (as new development in Mesa favors the eastern portions of the city), which hurt sales in Fiesta's more upscale stores.

In May of 2007, plans were announced to demolish the vacant Macy's location. The structure will be replaced by a new two-level building that will have two separate 50,000-square-foot (4,600 m²) tenants, one on each level. The tenants will be Best Buy and Dick's Sporting Goods. Demolition began in November 2007, with reconstruction to be completed and new tenants in place by the 2008 holiday season.. There are also plans to bring new, additional retail spaces on mall property just off Alma School Road, such as a bank or restaurant.

* Dillard's (195,395 sq ft.)

* Macy's (154,728 sq ft.)