The last bones of the 50-year-old Laguna Hills Mall are coming down as developers prepare to create a new community on a prime 68-acre property that will eventually accommodate a hotel, entertainment, apartments, office spaces and a community park.
Only one skeletal structure remains near the 5 Freeway and El Toro Road, and that’s the shell of the former Macy’s building. Still, that is expected to be down by April. A few buildings along the outer perimeter will remain, including In-N-Out Burger, BJ’s Restaurants and Brewhouse and King’s Fish House. Nordstrom Rack will also stay until its new location is built under a new movie theater near the 2.8-acre park.
The Laguna Hills Mall opened in 1973 as part of the build-out of the inland South County cities. The shuttering of the southern area’s first mall fits a trend seen across Southern California and the nation where developers are turning retail-oriented shopping destinations into urban uses that still include some shopping, but are more focused on creating a new community space with housing, office spaces, entertainment options and outdoor spaces.
Demolition began in the fall and is now nearly complete, said Laguna Hills Councilmember Don Caskey, a retired architect who, in his lifetime, worked on multiple large developments, including updates at UC Riverside. The former J.C. Penney’s came down about two months ago.
“They’re very close,” he said of the demo work, adding that he is the council’s liaison with the developer, Merlone Geier. “When (Macy’s) goes down, it will go down fast. They let the Macy’s building go last, so people who were set up in there with shops could have a Christmas season.”
The new community is dubbed Village at Laguna Hills; it replaces the earlier Five Lagunas, which proposed to redesign the mall’s interior, along with adding outdoor dining, a promenade and a high-end movie theater. In April, nearly six years after an initial ground breaking, the City…
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