As a lonely kid, I collected trash items and built them into backyard constructions.”[3] Jerde was a graduate of the School of Architecture at the University of Southern California.
The project was a five-story outdoor retail complex, with the main passage being diagonally oriented to the street grid and at the time anchored by Nordstrom, The Broadway, and J. W. Robinson's department stores; and connected to a Westin Hotel and the Balboa Theatre, resulting in an urban mixed-use center.
Jerde's Horton Plaza[6] brought 25 million visitors in its first year, and as of 2004 continued to generate San Diego's highest sales per unit area.
[7] Later the mall would lose business to centers in nearby Mission Valley as they renovated and to big box retailers, from a limited ability to capitalize on the resurgence of foot traffic on the adjacent Gaslamp District streets due to its physically being cut off behind parking garages, and from the 2010s retail apocalypse,[8] so that by 2019 it was set to close and be converted to a workplace for the tech industry.
[14] Jerde was named the first recipient of the USC School of Architecture's Distinguished Alumnus award, in 1985, and became a fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 1990.