BIGMallrat | Retail history of Northern California

Lawrence Plaza was one of Silicon Valley's more unusual retail experiments. Located along El Camino Real in Santa Clara's Koreatown district, the center transformed a former big-box retail space into a compact indoor shopping and dining destination focused on Korean businesses and restaurants. Operating from 2008 until its closure in 2023, Lawrence Plaza demonstrated how older retail properties could be adapted to serve changing demographics and community needs. Though relatively small, it offered a distinctive mix of dining, shopping, and cultural businesses that reflected the evolution of the surrounding neighborhood. The modest strip mall exterior of Lawrence Plaza in Santa Clara, marked by a prominent “Food Court” sign. Adaptive reuse and design From the outside, Lawrence Plaza appeared to be a conventional strip center. On the inside of one its buildings, however, developers had created a small enclosed shopping environment organized around a central food court. The co...

Once the largest shopping center in East Contra Costa County, Somersville Towne Center traces the evolution of suburban retail in Antioch. Opening in 1968 as the County East Shopping Center, the center expanded repeatedly over the following decades—from an open-air shopping center to a regional mall and later a modernized retail destination—as developers worked to keep pace with the rapid growth of East County. Somersville Towne Center began its life in late 1968 as the County East Shopping Center. Developed by Ernest W. Hahn, the original open-air center featured W.T. Grant, Safeway, and approximately 16 specialty shops, totaling 209,000 square feet—making it the largest shopping center in the region at the time. Just a year later, Montgomery Ward joined as a major anchor in 1969, further cementing the center’s growing importance. Building a mall Seeking to become a full-scale regional shopping destination, the center launched an ambitious expansion in 1972 that transformed the lay...