In this transitory moment, something magical is happening at the Lloyd Center.
The anchor department stores are all gone, and in their place, things have gotten a lot weirder and a lot cooler.
Yes, the Northeast Portland mall still has a Barnes & Noble. And a Game Stop. And somehow, an actual Hot Topic.
But the space that once held a Foot Locker now houses an art gallery. The former Spencer’s is a pinball museum and arcade. The old Brookstone is a theater that hosts magic shows. Regularly scheduled pop-up markets and events make it feel more like a street fair than a traditional mall.
1/34
The Lloyd Center is cool now
The Lloyd Center has 90 tenants, including about 60 independent retailers, nonprofits or activity spaces open to the public.
They are housed in the ruins of formerly well-known chain stores. The entrance to quirky vintage reseller Bauhaus Mode, for instance, has a faux tiled roof from what clearly used to be a Hollister.
“We’re almost just squatting in this capitalist temple,” said Jason Leivian, owner of Floating World Comics. “It’s a beautiful space, so we might as well use it.”
Plans to demolish and redevelop the 65-year-old mall have no firm timeline. So, for now, cheap rent, unlimited parking and plentiful square footage have lured start-ups and nonprofits to the mostly empty mall.
“It’s a dream scenario for an entrepreneur,” said Matt Morrison, owner of Legion Sabers, a company that sells Star Wars-inspired light sabers next to the ice rink. “It really is like a startup incubator for new creative retail, and I think Portland really needs that.”
A changing mall
The Lloyd Center opened Aug. 1, 1960, as a 100-store, open-air mall, said at the time to be the largest in the world. In the 1990s, it was remodeled into a more traditional enclosed shopping mall with a central food court.
The mall underwent another $50 million renovation in 2016, but that did not save it from the hard times that malls across the country faced after the internet shopping revolution. Nordstrom left first in 2015, followed in the next few years by Sears, Marshall’s and Macy’s.
By 2021, every anchor store was gone, and the Lloyd Center went into foreclosure. The mall was repossessed by New York lender KKR Real Estate Financial Trust, which brought on Seattle-based developer Urban Renaissance Group to plot a new future for the mall.
Two years ago, the Lloyd Center’s owners announced plans to redevelop the entire 29.3-acre site into a Bridgeport Village-style open-air concept with housing, shopping and entertainment venues. They plan to preserve the mall’s centerpiece ice rink, or some version of it.
That redevelopment will happen in phases, and the first of it has already begun. The old Nordstrom store is now half-demolished, making way for a new music venue with capacity for 2,000- 4,250 concertgoers when it opens in 2027.
Tom Kilbane, managing director in Portland for Urban Renaissance Group, said the existing mall would remain open at least through the 2025 holiday season. Beyond that, it’s unclear what might happen or when Lloyd Center will close.
“It’s amazing to see what’s been happening at Lloyd Center during this time of transition,” Kilbane wrote in a statement. “In addition to the long-standing tenants who’ve been there for years, there’s been an influx of small, local businesses that have brought a great sense of energy and creativity to the mall. There’s a very entrepreneurial spirit and a sense of community that’s developed. It’s a very Portland vibe.”
The lure of cheap rent
Leivian’s Floating World Comics was among the first wave of new tenants to move into the Lloyd Center almost three years ago. The comic book shop and publisher relocated from Old Town into the mall’s former Torrid clothing store.
“The big selling point is just that the rent was insanely cheap,” Leivian said. “Like, cheaper than when I first opened my store 16 years ago.”
Multiple mall tenants described retail leasing options for less than $1,000 a month, depending on the space.
“ It’s kind of like old Portland, which is independent businesses, weird businesses, because the key to old Portland was cheap rent,” Leivian said. “And if that’s harder to find out in various neighborhoods now, the Lloyd Center has it.”
La Tina’s Style of Elegance, a women’s clothing boutique, opened at the Lloyd Center in June. Owner La Tina McCord said she’s saving about $2,000 a month in rent compared to her previous location near Northeast 13th Avenue and Alberta Street.
“You don’t have the major corporations here, but you’ve got a lot of small businesses, and a lot of people are starting to come back over here,” she said. “The weekend is really busy because there’s always something going on.”
The leasing deals for food vendors are even better. Tenants said the mall charges a flat utility fee and then a rent based on a percentage of sales. That offer has brought in four local restaurants in the past year: Stoopid Burger, LoRell’s Chicken Shack, La Korita and Yummy Treats.
“ The community, the Lloyd Center district, needs the mall,” said Darell Preston, who moved his LoRell’s Chicken Shack cart into a space in the food court. “We need the people to come back. I know COVID had turned this thing upside down, but we’re slowly but surely getting it back together. It’s good that they’re giving us a shot.”
Danny Moore has owned the Stoopid Burger mobile food cart for 11 years. About five months ago, he added a second location at the Lloyd Center in the space that used to hold Billy Heartbeats, a 1950s style diner that closed in 2016.
“People think that the Lloyd Center is dead,” he said. “I never really cared what people thought anyways. A ghost mall with the best burger in town? People come and eat regardless, you know? So, it didn’t scare me away.”
In June, Empress Edwards-El opened Yummy Treats with her 16-year-old twin daughters. They serve up peach cobbler, banana pudding, strawberry pizza, sweet potato pie and a variety of shakes and energy drinks inside the old Cinnabon.
“ My sense is that the locals are not just taking over, but we are bringing life back into the Lloyd Center,” she said. “They haven’t had opportunities like this before. I think with gentrification of our city came a shutdown of a lot of things. We’re not gone. We’re still here, and we’re often the people that help rebuild things after the storm anyway.”
Spending a day at the mall
The mall’s owners no longer track vacancy rates, but walking through the hallways, more than half the storefronts appear empty. Yet, a kind of “nerd row” has taken hold on the mall’s second floor, with Gambit’s Games and Anime, Floating World Comics, the LEGO store Brickdiculous and dicepool, a tabletop game store.
“It’s all locals doing local stuff,” said dicepool owner Christian Benito, “which I think is a great opportunity to support our town, support the kind of weird Portland that we like to put bumper stickers on our cars about.”
Jason Andersen opened Star Tropics Pinball Museum in a former Spencer’s Gifts, next to Brickdiculous. For $8, visitors can get a wristband good for a full day of unlimited pinball gaming on about a dozen machines.
“A lot of people ask, what happened to Macy’s, what happened to Marshalls? And personally, I don’t think we miss those very much,” Andersen said. “It’s cool seeing, as an alternative, these small projects coming up. Family-focused things, queer-owned businesses, Black-owned businesses, special events, music, art, that sort of thing. And I feel like most Portlanders would say they love that, and we don’t necessarily need to have Old Navy here to be a success.”
In the pinball arcade’s front window, several tiny white mice slept curled up in a cage. They’re retired research animals, available for adoption via another mall tenant, Secondhand Pet Supply, which sells professionally cleaned, gently used pet items.
“What made me look at Lloyd Center was just the affordability, and also how well-maintained Lloyd Center actually is,” said Secondhand Pet Supply founder Michael Santiesteban. “Other parts of Portland, when you’re looking to rent, not only is it more expensive, you’re more likely to deal with windows breaking or people trying to break in.”
More than a dozen tenants interviewed for this story all praised mall security. Security guards are regularly seen walking the mall’s corridors and driving through the parking structures.
“The landlords at Lloyd Center, their security is really good. They patrol like crazy all the time inside and outside of the building,” said Roshan Fernando, co-owner of Jumbo’s Pickleball, an eight-court indoor pickleball club that opened next to the food court in November. “We’ve had wonderful experiences there altogether, and I’ll say this – knock on wood – we’ve had zero issues.”
This is not to say that Lloyd Center doesn’t have its problem areas. If you wander to the mostly unused areas of the underground parking garages, the vibe turns seedy. While the mall itself is clean, the exterior parking garage stairwells are littered with trash, graffiti and (as this reporter can sadly attest) human waste. But inside the mall, the stairwells and bathrooms were clean and cared for. Mall regulars suggest parking on the roof-top level of the Northeast 10th and Halsey garage.
The future
One of the drawbacks for shoppers is that many of the stores have limited hours, with many closed Mondays and Tuesdays. To address that, tenants have banded together to host Mall Crawl events on the second Saturday of the month, a day when retailers commit to being open and offering sales or specials.
The next Mall Crawl, on Aug. 9, will be themed as the Lloyd Center’s 65th “birthday bash.”
But it’s unclear if the mall, at least in this form, will make it to 66 years.
Management is no longer taking new long-term leases, though they will consider pop-ups or short-term leases. Tenants interviewed for this story said they had 60-day termination clauses in their leases.
Tenants are well aware this is a temporary situation, but many are optimistic they might have years, not months, before they’re asked to leave.
“I’m placing a bet that maybe two years, is what I’m thinking,” said Antonio Servín González, whose mom, Irene González, opened the Mexican food stand La Korita last December.
But for the time being, Irene González is getting valuable business experience. She’s part of Hacienda Community Development Corp.’s Empresarios program, which helps food entrepreneurs launch their first restaurants. And, her son said, she’s making contacts in the Lloyd community so that, when the mall closes, she might find another location near her customers.
Matt Henderson opened Virtua Gallery in December 2023, turning an old Foot Locker into an avant garde contemporary art space and studio. While he’s seen the mall’s redevelopment plans, he still hopes it’s possible to keep the mall’s core intact.
“I think the future of the mall still feels very open-ended,” he said. “This is a really unique opportunity for Portland to reinvent itself and fashion a shopping mall in its own image. It’s temperature-controlled, it’s unique infrastructure. There’s nothing like it in the city.”
There really is nothing quite like walking through a mostly empty mall and finding a group of people learning to roller skate inside the old Finish Line shoe store. This is where Jennifer “Chickpea” Ottenberg runs Skate Oregon School, offering roller skating lessons for kids and adults. Visitors can even rent out the space for private parties.
“I often hear this from passersby, that they come in, and it’s so sad and depressing,” Ottenberg said. “But if you took a pause and you looked around at what is here, it’s opened up doors for opportunity for startup companies or small business owners, nonprofit popups, experience space, community service. It’s given opportunity for ideas and things that otherwise would not be able to exist.”
She listed off a number of summer camps and indoor play spaces available in the Lloyd Center. The Portland Bridge Club and the Portland Chess Club host tournaments there. The Electronic Music Club teaches kids how to make electronic music, while the Synth Library provides low-cost access to electronic music gear and education. Choir groups meet at the mall. The Mucky Duck Theatre puts on children’s puppet shows and art classes. Twice a month, card markets bring in sports fans and Pokémon players. The Portland Zine Meetup gathers weekly in the food court to make and trade homemade magazines.
“All of these different cool, creative ways to experience your time, you’ve just got to look a little deeper,” Ottenberg said. “I hope that people see value in this, and it morphs the idea of what the Lloyd Center could be.”
If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.
link
