College Grove Shopping Center

College Grove Shopping Center, also Marketplace at the Grove, at SR-94 at College Avenue in Oak Park, San Diego, on the border of Lemon Grove, is an open-air shopping center, but was originally a regional shopping mall, only the second to be built in San Diego County, and the 37th in the country. It opened July 28, 1960 with an official grand opening ceremony on August 25, 1960. The site had 650,000 sq ft (60, 000 m2) of gross leasable space on its 70-acre (28 ha) site. The $28-million center had 60 stores (of which 20 were open at launch) and parking for 6,000 cars on two levels. There was a three-story branch of Walker Scott, the San Diego–based department store. More than 250,000 people attended the first day the center was open. There was a heliport with helicopter service to Lindbergh Field. A new amenity offered was "park-a-tot" child care. The architect was John Graham & Company of Seattle. There was also a two-level (36, 900 square foot) J.C. Penney, and J.J. Newberry and F.W. Woolworth variety stores. A one-level Mervyn's was added in the 1970s. In the mid-1980s the City of San Diego wished to have the center become a four-anchor enclosed mall, but anchor tenants could not be secured. Instead the center relaunched as Marketplace at the Grove in November 1988. By the late 1990s, the mall was half-vacant and in 1999 what remained of the original center was demolished, leav

Shopping mall data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).