Del Amo Fashion Center is a three-level regional shopping mall in Torrance, California, United States.
Del Amo Fashion Center has evolved from an amalgamation of several developments on the eastern side of the intersection of Hawthorne Boulevard and Carson Street in Torrance, California by Guilford Glazer (#384 on Forbes Richest 400).
[citation needed] On February 16, 1959, The Broadway opened its store at Hawthorne and Sepulveda boulevards, the ninth in Greater Los Angeles, and over the next two years the open-air Del Amo Shopping Center was built adjacent to it,[3] south of Carson Street.
[8] Bullock's developed several similarly named Fashion Squares, including ones in Sherman Oaks, La Habra and Santa Ana.
[citation needed] The center continued to evolve over the years as Ohrbach's closed in 1987 and became Swedish style furniture retailer STØR.
[16] I. Magnin followed in 1989 with part of their store eventually occupied by Old Navy, while Burlington Coat Factory opened in the basement of the former Del Amo Center.
[citation needed] Faced with a change in consumer shopping patterns, the consolidation of the department store industry, the existence of too many malls fragmenting the greater Los Angeles retail marketplace, lack of highway access and competition from the neighboring Nordstrom-anchored South Bay Galleria that opened in 1985, Del Amo began to suffer.
[citation needed] In early 2002, The Mills Corporation acquired Del Amo Fashion Center from Glazer's family for $420 million (USD).
The new open-air lifestyle center opened on September 14, 2006, anchored by a two-story flagship Forever 21), a Lucky Strike Lanes, and an AMC Theatres 18-screen multiplex to the mall.
[21] In conjunction with the renovation, Nordstrom announced it would relocate its store from the South Bay Galleria in nearby Redondo Beach to Del Amo, anchoring the new wing.
The first phase of the project, redeveloping the wing of shops above Carson Street into a new food court, renamed Patio Cafes, began in 2013.
[26] A medical building on the north end of the property and the existing one-story northern section were replaced with a two-story Fashion Wing, featuring a brighter and open "beach elegance" aesthetic to bring in more natural light and a mid-century modern look.
In 2018, renovation plans were completed to replace a significant portion of the south end's inline retail space with Dave & Buster's and a relocated Marshalls store.
The following year, the property's Sears store closed and its real estate purchased by mall owner Simon for future use.
[35] The store was taken over by the combined space of two side-by-side units formerly occupied by J.Crew and Chico's, located on the main level in the Nordstrom wing.
[37] The Del Amo Fashion Center was a central location and plot element of the 1997 Quentin Tarantino film Jackie Brown, though most of the mall scenes took place at a fictional department store in the mall, called Billingsley, which was actually just the north Macy's store with a prop Billingsley sign put up over the Macy's sign.