In 1992, the mall was heavily looted and damaged during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, but sales stayed consistent following the unrest briefly until the end of the decade.

After the Macy's Clearance Center (which replaced The Broadway upon the latter's purchase by Federated Department Stores) closed in December 1997, plans were announced to put in an AMC Theatre on the site and convert the mall into an open-air shopping center, but the renovations failed to materialize.

[7] A month later, on March 10, 2016, the Hawthorne Specific Plan, which included the revitalization of the ailing mall, was approved by the city council.

[12] The mall building and most of its multistory parking lots are now abandoned except for a police training center that was built in the portion formerly occupied by Montgomery Ward.

[13] The abandoned mall has also been used to film numerous movies, TV shows, and music videos such as Evolution (2001), Minority Report (2002), The Green Hornet (2006), The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006), Teen Wolf (2011), Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

(2013), Beyoncé's "Superpower" (2013), Gone Girl (2014), Lindsey Sterling's "Heist" (2014), David Guetta's "Bang My Head" (2014), Rush Hour (2016), Colony (2016), Westworld (2016), Taylor Swift's "...Ready for It?"