By Willow (willowashmaple.sbs)
August 7, 2026
In the happier days of the 1990s, shopping malls were still seen as the core of a community. At the time, malls had everything, and lots more were built around them. Malls were destinations, not just places to get in and out.
As a young adult in Seattle, I often spent time at the Westlake Center for cheap dinners or to browse the shelves of the Brentano's bookstore. When I moved into my very first apartment, my uncle took me to the Factoria Mall to get the household essentials at Target. Bellevue Square had the art museum on the top floor, and there was an all-you-can-eat Italian restaurant on the first floor. Then the SuperMall of the Northwest, billed as the biggest in the Pacific Northwest at the time, opened in Auburn. I remember spending hours there.
So on my first-ever trip to Portland, Oregon, on March 24, 1995, with a $24 round-trip Amtrak ticket, I went to Powell's, but then I rode the (still 9-year-old) MAX from Pioneer Square to Lloyd Center. At the time, Seattle had no urban light rail, so it was a novelty for me.
Two years later, I decided to move to Portland. I remember sitting at Lloyd Center food court looking through the Willamette Week and the Oregonian classified ads for apartment listings. I called a few landlords from a payphone on that floor (this was 1997; I had a pager and a voicemail, but no cell phone).
Around the turn of the 21st century, Lloyd Center still advertised itself as "Oregon's largest mall." I guess that was true if it was inclusive of the IMAX movie theater on Multnomah Street (which used to have a plaza with plaques commemorating the Rose Festival queens) and the annex to the north, between Halsey and Broadway, anchored by Safeway and Newberry's (Newberry's would later close and Dollar Tree moved in).
The annex was once called "Holladay's Marketplace," and it was where small businesses could rent a space cheaply. The legendary Macheezmo Mouse was there. There was also a food cart called Divine Cafe, owned by Rose Giordano -- perhaps one of the oldest food carts of its kind, years before Portland became the food cart town.
During the years I lived in Portland (1997-2016), a majority of the time I lived in the Northeast Portland neighborhoods: Irvington, Sullivan's Gulch, Piedmont, Rose City Park, and Madison South. To save money and take advantage of TriMet's Fareless Square (later renamed Free Rail Zone, and finally eliminated in 2012), I would walk all the way to Lloyd Center, then walk through the mall, and exit the mall at the 9th Avenue and Multnomah Street doors to get on the MAX into downtown (and in reverse, on the way back home). There was a pet shop that sold cats (still a common practice at the time), and it became my habit of a sort to say hi to the kittens in the windows.
Sometimes I would just sit by the skating rink and watch the figure skaters practice their art. Along with the Clackamas Town Center ice rink, this was one of two places where Tonya Harding trained.
The day after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, I remember walking through the mall. It was eerily quiet, with maybe two-thirds of the shops still closed.
Around 2001, Lloyd Center used to have a few public internet kiosks called Centerlinq. It was long before the proliferation of free Wi-Fi. The kiosks were not very easy to use, with a cranky touchscreen and an awful user interface. They were quietly removed several months later.
Around 2010, the mall was renovated to make it more hospitable, so to speak. There was lots of comfortable furniture and places to sit. At the same time, the mall began to diversify a bit: offices began to move into vacated retail spaces, and Carrington College (formerly Apollo College) took over the former Toys-R-Us space and half of the third floor.
The skating rink shrunk (from a rectangular one to an oval one). In 2017, the mall built a new entrance facing Multnomah Street (with the iconic spiral staircase) in a last-ditch effort to revive the dying shopping center, as the anchor tenants such as Sears, Nordstrom, Macy's, and Marshalls exited.
In its final and post-COVID years, Lloyd Center became home to an assortment of quirky indie businesses as the rents dropped. But by then, it was beginning to look just like the final days of the other dead Portland mall, the Galleria. Even before the pandemic, people were talking of the "retail armageddon" as many brick-and-mortar retail chains declared bankruptcy.
This isn't the "death of the mall," though. Washington Square is thriving. Bridgeport Village still attracts new tenants and is teeming with shoppers every day. Clackamas Town Center seems to be doing fine, as well.
Lloyd Center had a chronic problem with gang violence in the parking lots and the surrounding streets, and that contributed to the negative public perceptions. Also, despite its accessibility by public transit, it was not well designed to integrate with TriMet. Coming from the Lloyd Center MAX station, one would have to walk through Holladay Park and then find an entrance. Before 2017, it was genuinely difficult for people to figure out how to get into the mall from that side.
Maybe it's a problem specific to inner-city shopping malls. Salem Center in downtown Salem, Oregon, is just as dead as the Lloyd. Pioneer Place in downtown Portland has lots of unfilled vacancies, as well.
I've read somewhere recently that Gen Z and Gen Alpha discovered malls, seeking off-screen and analog social experiences.
In less than 24 hours from now, Lloyd Center will close its 66-year-and-a-week history.
Lloyd Center photos (Wikimedia Commons)
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