Hawthorne Plaza

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Partially abandoned shopping center along Hawthorne Boulevard between 120th and 128th Streets in Hawthorne, CA. The 40-acre property opened in 1977 and included an indoor mall and free standing stores at the property's south end. The mall largely catered to the middle class residents living in and around Hawthorne and featured cheaper stores than other nearby malls such as South Bay Galleria and Manhattan Village. Despite initial popularity, the mall went into decline in the 1990s due in part to the economic decline of the area after the cutbacks in aerospace jobs and to competition from other shopping centers. The mall's number of occupied stores declined from 130 in the late 80s to 87 in 1994 and around 70 in 1998. By that year only one anchor store was remaining out of the original four. After the Macy's Clearance Center (at the former site of The Broadway) closed down in December 1997 there were plans to put in an AMC theatre on the site and to convert the mall into an open air one. There plans never came into fruition, however, and the mall portion closed down in 1999. The property's southern part was redone in 1998 and is still open. It includes a supermarket, a pharmacy, and some small restaurants. The mall building and most of its multistory parking lots are now abandoned except for a Quizno's at 120th and Hawthorne and a police training center that was built in the portion formerly occupied by Montgomery Ward's. The abandoned mall has also been used to film a number of movies.