Eastmont Town Center

Eastmont is the name of a former regional shopping mall built on 33 acres bounded roughly by Foothill Boulevard, Bancroft and 73rd Avenues in East Oakland, Oakland, California. The mall opened in 1970 (on the site of a 1920's-era Chevrolet truck factory) and was a popular and heavily-used shopping destination during most of the 1970's and 1980's; but declined by the 1990's due to a huge drop in the average income level, and a corresponding increase in the crime rate, in the surrounding inner-city neighborhoods; many long-time middle-class residents relocated to nearby suburbs elsewhere in Alameda County during this period.

Eastmont's primary anchor tenants were JCPenney, Mervyns and Safeway; several well-known Bay Area and national retailers such as Woolworth's were also well represented.

Eastmont Mall was the only remaining indoor mall in Oakland after the closure of MacArthur-Broadway Center (or MB Center) in North Oakland in the mid-1990's. That property has since been bought by Kaiser Hospital.

JCPenney and Mervyns closed their Eastmont locations in the early 1990's. In the early 2000's, the mall was only 30 percent leased and had fallen into bankruptcy. Local real estate developers purchased the mall in 2000, and emphasized a focus on neighborhood and community services beneficial to the surrounding residents; many of the now-abandoned retail stores were converted into office space (the Mervyns location was converted into a substation for the Oakland Police Department and the JCPenney location was converted into a joint City of Oakland/Alameda County social services center). A handful of existing retail tenants stayed on, and a few new ones were attracted due to the success of the renovations. In the spring of 2007, the mall was sold to a group of real estate investors based in Oregon.

References

* "How shopping mall became the Eastmont Town Center"; Oakland Tribune, February 29, 2004
* "Rethinking an old box"; East Bay Business Times, November 10, 2000