El Con Mall

Address: 3601 East Broadway, Tucson, AZ, 85716

Hours:

10:00 - 21:00 ( Mon - Sat )  12:00 - 17:00 ( Sun )  

About

El Con Mall is an enclosed shopping mall in the city of Tucson, Arizona, United States. Originally opened in 1960 as an outdoor shopping center, it is currently the oldest shopping mall in the Tucson area. It features JCPenney, Ross Dress For Less, Target and The Home Depot as its anchor stores. Two additional anchor stores, last occupied by Dillard's and Macy's, have been vacant since 1999 and early 2008, respectively.

El Con Mall is classified as a dead mall, due to the fact that it is largely vacant. Besides the mall's anchor stores, only a multiplex movie theater and six other stores remain open, although several restaurants have opened on the periphery in the past five years. Because of the center's low occupancy rate, it is slated to be demolished and reverted to an open-air complex, although no official announcement has been made on the mall's redevelopment.

History

El Con Mall opened in 1960, adjacent to a hotel known as the El Conquistador Hotel. Although initial plans called for the hotel to be part of the mall itself, these plans were later scrapped. An outdoor mall at the time of its opening, El Con Mall featured five anchor stores: national chains JCPenney, Montgomery Ward, and Woolworth, along with local chains Steinfeld's and Goldwater's. Around 1968, the former El Conquistador Hotel space was demolished, and a Levy's was built on its site; the mall was eventually enclosed as well. Joseph Kivel, developer of El Con Mall, later opened another shopping mall called Park Place nearby in 1975; after his death in 1995, both malls were sold to his nephew, Alvin Kivel.

Levy's (which was owned by Federated Department Stores) became Sanger-Harris in 1985, marking the first of several name changes in the mall's western anchor store. Sanger-Harris became Foley's in 1987, Robinson's in 1993 and Robinsons-May in 1997. Goldwater's, in turn, became Diamond's in 1983, and then Dillard's one year later.

El Con Mall is still owned by the heirs of its original developer, Joseph Kivel. Following the elder Kivel's demise in 1996, his descendants began renovations on the mall. A multiplex movie theater and food court were both added behind JCPenney, although no restaurants were ever opened in the food court. Additional plans promised "a unique variety of retail stores", but competition from larger malls, most notably Park Place, caused El Con to lose more stores than it gained. Among the stores to move to Park Place was the Dillard's anchor store, which did so in 1999; as of 2008, the former Dillard's at El Con is still vacant.

In 2000, Montgomery Ward closed with the chain's demise. This store was demolished two years later for Target and The Home Depot; the addition of these stores was considered controversial by local residents, many of whom did not want such big box retailers in the area. (Neither Target nor The Home Depot is directly accessible from within the mall itself; the eastern wing currently dead-ends in a blank wall next to the Target store.)

Although many retailers and restaurants opened on the mall's periphery in the 2000s, the enclosed mall itself continued to lose tenants. In 2005, May Department Stores (then owners of the Robinsons-May name) was acquired by Macy's, Inc., and most May Department Stores nameplates were converted to the Macy's name. The Macy's store in El Con Mall was deemed unprofitable, and closed in 2008, shortly after the addition of a Ross Dress For Less store in the Macy's wing.