Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Puente Hills: Some History

(Click on image to zoom in)


We caught a movie at the mall theater-plex over the weekend.  Being there prompted the questions:  what is the history of the mall and what is the meaning behind the place name "Puente Hills?"

Puente Hills Mall opened in 1974 with these statistics:  stretching throughout 94 acres, it was built at a cost of $40 million in the City of Industry, anchored by four major department stores.  It would be the first of three malls to be completed in the San Gabriel Valley that would be "air-conditioned and enclosed," taxing the viability of the older, open-air Eastland Shopping Center in Covina.  The promises of an indoor climate in the Puente Hills Mall raised concerns as the nation was undergoing an oil embargo crisis.

Two other shopping malls to follow were Fashion Park in Arcadia, and Fashion Plaza in West Covina.  These developments surely foiled the work of the Puente Hills Community Coalition that had, as late as 1972, worked to curtail home construction in places like Diamond Bar, Rowland Heights, the Workman Mill area, and La Habra Heights.  Even before the Puente Hills Mall was completed, the developer, Western Harness Racing Inc., unveiled another plan to build Puente Hills East, a automotive shopping center, home furnishings center as well as offices, to be completed about 1979.

The mall gained a bit of notoriety when its south parking lot was featured in the 1985 film, "Back to the Future."  (Update from October, 2015 - see end of post for a mall promotion of the movie's 30th anniversary)

The Puente Hills extend from the western face (roughly at the location of Rio Hondo College) to Rowland Heights on the east, and the Pomona Freeway providing a general northern boundary, and the mountains have the following at its base:  Whittier, City of Industry, Hacienda Heights, La Habra, Rowland Heights, and Brea.  The hills have provided a century of petroleum sustenance, too.

(Courtesy of the Library of Congress American Memory Map Collection.)

The name "Puente Hills" is derived from the region that provided a "bridge" to dry land as the Spanish expedition led by Don Gaspar de Portola crossed a San Jose creek in 1769.  Rancho de la Puenta encompassed nearly 49,000 acres of former mission land.  The rancho was eventually granted by the Mexican government to "foreigners", the first overland American settlers, John Rowland and William Workman, about 1845.  By the end of the U.S. war with Mexico, the spelling, Puenta had changed in land claim records to Puente.

Neighboring ranchos of the 1840s Mexican California included Rancho de la Luis Arinas in the north, next to Rio San Gabriel, and Rancho El Susa, also owned by Arinas, which later became Azusa when Englishman Henry Dalton bought both properties.  Another neighbor was Ricardo Vejar's Rancho de San Jose.  Vejar also eventually purchased Rancho Los Nogales from the widow of Jose de la Luz Linares.

October 17, 2015:  While waiting for a 10:40 p.m. screening of Pan, a stroll through the mall brought an encounter with a Delorean on display, apparently to celebrate the Puente Hills Mall parking lot as one of the film locations for the original Back To The Future.




Update 7.21.2023:

In response to a couple of recent comments, here are photos I took way back in March of 2022.  I went to Macy's and came upon their storewide closing sale.  Sad to see them go even though I rarely went there in recent years...





13 comments:

  1. Yeah agree with anonymous above. That place is a joke and a dump. Held one of my early high school jobs in the mid 70 at Howard Johnson restaurant. Nice mall to hang out in as a teen.

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    1. I mean I've never been there as I live in Chicago but in Back to the Future it looks like a pretty nice mall at least from the parking lot. I read something about like a murder and disrepair? Could someone follow me up with what happened? I can't seem to find it online.

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  2. Thanks for reading. I shop there, and recently the mall is gotten better looking - they actually have a lot of the stores I would go to, say, Brea Mall. No comparison, but close enough with a decent selection of teenage clothes. And the theaters have the reclining seats - very comfy!!

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  3. This mall has been dying since the mid-2000s with more attractive options such as Brea or Arcadia mall. It seems once GameWorks, Anchor Blue, Borders, and the stores of yesteryear closed and faded away, the mall just became a dead space for mall-walkers and older people to sit and socialize. AMC has always kept the mall in business -- Round One opening in 2010 helped a lot too. With Sears and Forever 21 gone, the mall is just taking it day by day. COVID-19 and the current indoor-mall closure statewide will probably seal the fate on all the smaller-owned shops in the mall. Since 2018, the mall has had artist renditions plastered throughout of a possible full-scale makeover, but it has been years of no action. I really think Westfield or some big name should re-do the mall at some point. Because brick-and-mortar retail is not dead; if you create an attractive experience, people will still shop.

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  4. Thank you very much for the comments.

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  5. Question...what year was there a cracker barrel in that mall?

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  6. I grew up in Rowland Heights 1965 - 1980 and the PH Mall was a big deal! But time and progress has left it behind. Today, I live in Prescott, AZ where our Gateway Mall (very similar to PH) is dying, too. We’re hoping they build apartments on top with restaurants and entertainment below.

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  7. Does anyone remember the name of the Brazilian restaurant they used to have in the mall?

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    1. It was called Roda Viva (Google works wonders).

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  8. Thank you to the 2 recent July comments. Yes, it would be neat to see a conversion to housing but I don't think City of Industry wants too many residents (I could be wrong). I don't remember a Brazilian restaurant. Hey I just posted 3 photos (on the closing of Macy's back in 2022) to update this post - check it out!

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  9. Fond memories in Puente Hills Mall:
    PHM Story – It was successful, fun and crowded. Mall owners simply did not invest sufficiently in repurposing.
    https://mall-hall-of-fame.blogspot.com/2010/01/puente-hills-mall-south-azusa-avenue.html

    While in Wilson High School, my friends and I rode our bikes to PHM to watch - Back to the Future filming.

    My first job was for a Fredelle Shoes at lower level J.W. Robinson’s wing from 1985 to June 1986.

    From January 1987 to September 1989, I was a mall security officer with chief Bill Camp, who had retired from LASD. During the holidays, I directed the crowds of shoppers and heavy mall entry traffic.

    PHM was last sold in 2015 to Kam Sang of Arcadia, an independent investor with limited resources and poor management. The City of Industry hasn’t done much to incentivize repurposing PHM real estate. Industry probably will not permit any kind of housing.

    Brea, Montclair and Santa Anita malls continue to redevelop to adapt to the changing market.

    I remain hopeful for Puente Hills Mall’s future with experiential, new retail and restaurants that better serve the shifting Asian and Latino demographics.

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  10. Thank you for your comments, A.M. Ayala! Sincerely, Betty (Elisabeth)

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