A strip mall, strip center, strip plaza or simply plaza is a type of shopping center common in North America where the stores are arranged in a row, with a footpath in front. Strip malls are typically developed as a unit and have large parking lots in front. Many of them face major traffic arterials and tend to be self-contained with few pedestrian connections to surrounding neighborhoods. Smaller strip malls may be called mini-malls, while larger ones may be called power centers or big box centers. In 2013, The New York Times reported that the United States had 65,840 strip malls. In 2020, The Wall Street Journal wrote that in the United States, despite the continuing retail apocalypse starting around 2010, investments and visitor numbers were increasing to strip malls.
Commercial areas in a city are areas, districts, or neighborhoods primarily composed of commercial buildings, such as a strip mall, office parks, downtown, central business district, financial district, "Main Street", or shopping centers. Commercial activity within cities includes the buying and selling of goods and services in retail businesses, wholesale buying and selling, financial establishments, and a wide variety of uses that are broadly classified as "business." While commercial activities typically take up a relatively small amount of land, they are extremely important to a community's economy. They provide employment, facilitate the circulation of money, and often serve many other roles important to the community, such as public gathering and cultural events.
Oglethorpe Mall is a super-regional shopping mall on the south side of Savannah, Georgia.
The Dâmbovița Center is an unfinished building in Bucharest, Romania, near Cotroceni, on the shore of the Dâmbovița River. Casa Radio was erected during the late 1980s by the Communist regime on land which before the Second World War was the location of the Bucharest Hippodrome. The building was intended to serve as a museum of the Romanian Communist Party. The balcony of the unfinished building facing Știrbei Vodă Street was used by the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu on 23 August 1989 to watch the festivities marking Romania's National Day. It was the last Communist-style parade in Romania.
Oakland City Center is an office, shopping and hotel complex in Downtown Oakland, Oakland, California. The complex is the product of a redevelopment project begun in the late 1950s. It covers twelve city blocks between Broadway on the east, Martin Luther King Jr. Way on the west, Frank H. Ogawa Plaza on 14th Street on the north side of the complex and the Oakland Convention Center and Marriott Hotel extend south to 10th Street. An hourly parking garage is located beneath the complex's shopping mall. The mall features an upscale fitness and racquet club, in addition to numerous take-out restaurants and other stores. The complex is served by the 12th Street/Oakland City Center BART station.
The Inner Harbor is a former industrial quarter of Syracuse, New York, situated at the center of a larger district long colloquially known as Oil City, and since 1989 rebranded as the Lakefront. The waterfront zone was originally considered to be limited to just that area bounded by West Kirkpatrick, Solar, West Bear, and Van Rensselaer streets, but it has been gradually enlarged by the process of familiarity and promotion to include the opposite sides of some of those streets.
Hawthorne Plaza is an abandoned former shopping mall along Hawthorne Boulevard between 120th Street and El Segundo Boulevard in Hawthorne, California.
Alderwood, formerly Alderwood Mall, is a regional shopping mall in Lynnwood, Washington. It is anchored by JCPenney, Macy's and Nordstrom and comprises both a traditional enclosed mall and two open-air areas known as The Village and The Terraces. Brookfield Properties manages and co-owns the property with an institutional investor.
The City Creek Center (CCC) is a mixed-use development with an upscale open-air shopping center, office and residential buildings, fountain, and simulated creek near Temple Square in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. It is an undertaking by Property Reserve, Inc. (PRI), the commercial real estate division of the Corporation of the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Taubman Centers, Inc. (TCI). The CCC integrates shopping and residential elements, with foliage-lined walkways and streams covering two blocks in the heart of downtown Salt Lake. PRI invested in the housing and parking elements of the mall, while TCI owns and operates the shopping center itself. The CCC opened to the general public on March 22, 2012. This shopping, office, and residential center encompass nearly 20 acres (8.1 ha) of downtown Salt Lake City. The City Creek Center is part of an estimated $5 billion sustainable design project to revitalize downtown Salt Lake City. The CCC project itself has been estimated to cost around $1.5 billion.
Easton Town Center is a shopping center and mall in northeast Columbus, Ohio, United States. Opened in 1999, the core buildings and streets that comprise Easton are intended to look like a self-contained town, reminiscent of American towns and cities in the early-to-mid 20th century. Included in the design are fountains, streets laid out in a grid pattern surrounded by a continuous loop, and metered storefront parking.
Westlake Shopping Center is one of the first shopping malls built in America; ground was broken in 1948 for the mall in Daly City, California, United States. It is anchored by Burlington Coat Factory, Home Depot, Ross, Safeway, Target, and Walgreens.
Swansea Mall was a regional shopping mall located in Swansea, Massachusetts. It served the Southeastern Massachusetts area. Located off Exit 3 of I-195, the building is situated at the intersection of U.S. Route 6 and Massachusetts Route 118, on Swansea Mall Drive. It had three out-parcel buildings: a Walmart building behind the mall, a former Toys "R" Us, a shared PriceRite & Dollar Tree. The Swansea Crossings shopping plaza is across the street, and contains a Big Lots and a Tractor Supply Company. The mall closed permanently on March 31, 2019. It was purchased by Anagnost Companies in May 2019 at auction.
Assembly Square is a neighborhood in Somerville, Massachusetts. It is located along the west bank of the Mystic River, bordered by Ten Hills and Massachusetts Route 28 to the north and the Charlestown neighborhood of Boston to the south. The district's western border runs along Interstate 93. Located 2.5 mi (4.0 km) from downtown Boston, the 143 acres (580,000 m2) parcel is named for a former Ford Motor Company plant that closed in 1958.
The Sunset Esplanade is an outdoor shopping center located in the southeast part of Hillsboro, in the U.S. state of Oregon. Opened in 1989, the center is along Tualatin Valley Highway at Minter Bridge Road and includes about five anchor tenants and about thirty other tenants in a complex with about 363,000 square feet (33,700 m2) of space. Neighbors opposed the center when it was proposed, due to concerns over increased traffic and how it would blend with existing residential neighborhoods. After appeals to the Hillsboro City Council and state land use board, the $23 million project received approval almost two years after first proposed.
Swire Properties Limited is a property developer, owner and operator of mixed-use, principally commercial properties in Hong Kong and Mainland China. Founded and headquartered in Hong Kong in 1972, Swire Properties is a major property developer in Hong Kong, and is listed on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong. Including subsidiaries, it employs around 4,500 people. The company is, in turn, a subsidiary of the publicly-listed Swire Pacific Limited.
Bayside Expo Center was a convention center located in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Originally opened as a shopping mall called Bayside Mall in the 1960s, the mall later failed and the convention center opened in its place. In 2010, it was purchased by the University of Massachusetts Boston after the building went into foreclosure. After the building's roof collapsed from the weight of accumulated snowfall during the 2014–15 North American winter, the university demolished the facility in 2016. In 2019, the University of Massachusetts board of trustees leased the property to Accordia Partners. In 2020, Accordia Partners proposed redeveloping the property into a 21-building mixed-used biotechnology science park called "Dorchester Bay City". In 2023, the Boston Planning & Development Agency approved the Accordia Partners proposal.
Gateway Center, also referred to as Gateway Plaza Mall or simply Gateway Mall, is a shopping complex in the Spring Creek section of East New York, Brooklyn, in New York City. It is located just north of the Belt Parkway at Erskine Street and Gateway Drive, which is near portions of the Gateway National Recreation Area. Built as part of the Gateway Estates plan for commercial and retail development, it consists of two structures: the original structure opened in 2002, and a second adjacent development opened in 2014.
A power center or big-box center is a shopping center with typically 250,000 to 600,000 square feet of gross leasable area that usually contains three or more big box anchor tenants and various smaller retailers, where the anchors occupy 75–90% of the total area.
Tutuban Center is a shopping complex and public transit hub in Manila, the Philippines that opened in 1993. It encompasses five retail buildings and a parking building in and around Manila's central train station located in the shopping precinct of Divisoria in Tondo district. The 20-hectare (49-acre) mixed-use development includes the original two-story brick and iron main terminal building of the Ferrocaril de Manila-Dagupan built in 1887, a declared national historical building by the National Historical Commission of the Philippines since 1934. It also includes the Bonifacio Plaza fronting the old terminal building on Recto Avenue where a statue of Andrés Bonifacio was erected in 1971. Its integrated mall complex houses a mix of wholesale and retail bazaars and covers only 8.5 hectares of the total 20-hectare development. The complex will house the interchange station between the proposed North–South Commuter Railway and an extension of the Manila Light Rail Transit System Line 2 according to the masterplan submitted by the Japan International Cooperation Agency in 2015. Its redevelopment plan also entails the construction of several mixed-use buildings, including office towers, residential buildings, hotels, a convention center, and a 300-metre (980 ft)-high observation tower to be known as the Tower of Maynila.
