Despite a mall-wide renovation completed in 1985 and the addition of new tenants such as ZCMI and Bealls, Tri-City Mall continued to diminish throughout the 1990s, with JCPenney closing in 1998.

Malouf chose the site because he felt that Mesa, being a tourist destination, was a suitable market for a shopping mall.

[9] Other major tenants of the mall included Piccadilly Restaurants, a Bashas' supermarket, a Walgreens drugstore, and an S. H. Kress variety store.

[13] In response, local developer Grossman Companies purchased the property from Malouf in late 1984 and announced a $2.5 million renovation plan.

[15] By 1987, portions of the former Diamond's building had been taken by local clothing store Winston's, as well as a Cigna health office,[16] along with a food court and four-screen movie theater.

[18] Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution (ZCMI), a Salt Lake City, Utah-based department store chain founded by Brigham Young, chose to open in the former Winston's space in 1990.

The Tri-City Mall store was not only the chain's first in Arizona but also among the first in a concept known as ZCMI II, which had debuted two years prior in Utah.

Rubin representatives noted that Tri-City Mall had continued to decline in tenancy following the opening of Superstition Springs Center in 1990, and would likely continue to lose business after Arizona Mills' opening in 1997; another factor in the mall's decline was its distance from a major freeway or direction of residential growth.

[26] By the time of JCPenney's closure, only six tenants remained: Bealls, Walgreens, Radio Shack, GNC, Furr's cafeteria, and a clothing store called Western Village.

[27] Reconstruction of the mall into Tri-City Pavilions ensued in 1999, with a Safeway supermarket confirmed that year as a new anchor store.

[31] In 2021, Mesa issued a $2.3 million tax subsidy to a company, Dobson Properties Sub-Fund, who will build 245 market-rate apartments on part of the parking lot.