Orange County Plaza

Orange County Plaza, later Garden Grove Mall, Garden Promenade, now The Promenade at Garden Grove, was, upon its expansion in 1959, with sixty stores, the largest shopping center in Orange County, California, and at the time billed itself as "Orange County's first regional shopping center". However, Anaheim Plaza had in fact already opened In 1955, four years prior, and had an anchor department store (The Broadway).^[2]

The open-air shopping center is located at Chapman Avenue and Brookhurst Street in Garden Grove, California, a Los Angeles suburb of 171,644 (2019 estimate).^[3]

History

The center was announced in 1956 and was to cost $10,000,000. In 1956 and 1958, the project announced that Penney's, Newberry's and Grant's would locate in the Plaza, as well as the first branch of Rankin's department store of Santa Ana, which was to measure 28,000 sq ft (2,600 m²) – however, Rankin's never did wind up opening a branch there.^[4][5]

First phase (opened 1956)

The center first opened in 1956 with 20 stores and 60,000 sq ft (5,600 m²) of gross leasable area^[6] on 10 acres (4.0 ha),^[5] including:^[7]

• Thriftimart supermarket
• Economart drugstore

Second phase (opened 1959)

Phase II added 40 stores and 275,000 sq ft (25,500 m²) of gross leasable area on an additional 35 acres (14 ha). This phase added the anchor stores:^[8]

• a 40,000 sq ft (3,700 m²)
  J. C. Penney (scaled down from 65,000 sq ft (6,000 m²) as originally announced)^[5]
• a 20,000 sq ft (1,900 m²) W. T. Grant variety store
• a 22,500 sq ft (2,090 m²)
  Safeway
  supermarket, which moved from across the street
• a 17,000 sq ft (1,600 m²)
  Thrifty Drug Store (later became Rite Aid
  in 1998)
• a 10,000 sq ft (930 m²)
  Hartfield's
  junior department store