El Cerrito Plaza (shopping center)
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 Street-facing storefronts on the northern end of the center. |
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| Location | San Pablo Avenue and Fairmont Avenue, El Cerrito, California, USA |
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| Opening date | 1958 |
| Owner | Regency Centers Corporation |
| No. of stores and services | 70 |
| Total retail floor area | 350,000 square feet (33,000 m2) |
| No. of floors | 2 |
| Website | http://www.elcerritoplaza.com/ |
El Cerrito Plaza is a shopping center in El Cerrito, California, a suburb in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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[edit] Location
El Cerrito Plaza is located on the southern border of El Cerrito (adjacent to Alameda County and the City of Albany) between San Pablo Avenue and the BART rail tracks. Directly to the north is the El Cerrito Plaza BART station.
An access ramp connects the Plaza with the Ohlone Greenway bike and pedestrian pathways which run below the elevated BART tracks from Berkeley to Richmond.
[edit] History
El Cerrito Plaza is located on a part of the June 12, 1834 Rancho San Pablo Mexican land grant to Francisco María Castro. Several buildings were constructed by the Castro family over the years. Víctor Castro, Francisco's son, built his wood frame adobe home here in the early 19th century and it remained standing until it burned down in 1956, shortly before the original shopping center was built. During the 1930s, the Castro adobe housed a gambling casino, and the eastern side of the current Plaza housed a dog racing track. After the track closed, its parking lot housed a trailer park for Kaiser shipyard workers, with the track field area used by El Cerrito High School. In the late 1940s, a drive in theatre (Cerrito Motor Movies) was built there and operated until the mid 1950s.
El Cerrito Plaza originally opened in 1958 as a 350,000-square-foot (33,000 m2) regional mall, centered around a Capwell's department store. Until Hilltop Mall opened in nearby Richmond, it was the only shopping center outside of the various downtown shopping districts in this part of the East Bay.
El Cerrito Plaza began to decline with the 1976 opening of the Hilltop Mall in Richmond. Many of the Asian owned and operated merchants relocated to the Pacific East Mall when it opened nearby in 1998. and the major redevelopment of Emeryville in the 1990s and later the Bay Street Emeryville mall in the 2000s. The closures of the Woolworth's store in 1993 and the Emporium (formerly Capwell's) anchor store in 1996 accelerated the Plaza's decline.
In 2002, El Cerrito Plaza was partly demolished, remodeled, and reopened in its present form. The San Francisco Chronicle panned the newly reconstructed Plaza, calling it "in a nutshell, dysfunctional and dull" and an example that "[i]f a city doesn't insist on good development and then stick to its guns, things can go from bad to worse."[1]
In 2003, as part of the renovation, the shopping center's parking lot was drawn back from the edge of channelized Cerrito Creek, which runs along the southern boundary of the Plaza, and marks the boundary separating Alameda and Contra Costa Counties. The creek was re-contoured to give it a more natural flow pattern, planted with native vegetation, and edged with a pathway with seating walls by Friends of the Five Creeks.
[edit] Events
A Farmers' Market is held at the Plaza every Tuesday and Saturday.
[edit] Stores
The following is a partial listing of retail stores and restaurants at El Cerrito Plaza.
[edit] Anchors
- Barnes and Noble
- Bed Bath and Beyond
- CVS Pharmacy (formerly Longs Drugs)
- Dress Barn
- JoAnn Fabrics
- Lucky Stores (formerly Albertsons)
- Petco
- Ross Dress For Less
- Trader Joe's
[edit] Restaurants and Eateries
- Chef's Chinese Food
- Jamba Juice
- The Junket
- Pasta Pomodoro
- Panda Express
- Rubio's
- Romano's Macaroni Grill
- Starbucks
- Wing Stop
- Yami Sushi
- Lords (formally Coldstone)
[edit] Other Retail Stores
- AT&T
- GameStop
- Pier 1 Imports
- See's Candies
- Silver Screen Video
- T-Mobile
- Verizon Wireless
- The UPS Store
[edit] References
- Squatriglia, Chuck (1999-12-08). "El Cerrito Plaza to be Resuscitated: $40 Million overhaul to bring big-name stores". San Francisco Chronicle. p. A-21. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/1999/12/08/MN78531.DTL. Retrieved 2006-01-10.
- King, John (2002-03-29). "Plaza lacks pizzazz: El Cerrito's redone center ends up a stodgy maze". San Francisco Chronicle. p. A-21. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2002/03/29/MN203300.DTL. Retrieved 2006-01-10.
[edit] External links
- El Cerrito Plaza, Official site.
Coordinates: 37°53′59″N 122°17′59″W / 37.899737°N 122.299756°W
