| Location | Concord, California |
|---|---|
| No. of stores and services | 170 [1] |
| No. of anchor tenants | 3 |
| Total retail floor area | 1,400,000 square feet (130,000 m2) |
| No. of floors | 2 |
| Website | www.shopsunvalley.com/ |
Sunvalley Mall is a regional shopping center located in Concord, California (one of the suburbs in the San Francisco Bay Area, in east central Contra Costa County). Located off of Interstate 680, Sunvalley is owned and operated by the Taubman Company and is anchored by Macy's, JCPenney, and Sears.
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Sunvalley offers a mix of traditional mall retail with some high-end tenants, including Bebe, Charlotte Russe, Buckle, Cotton On, Abercrombie & Fitch, Disney Store, Yankee Candle, COACH, MAC Cosmetics, Brookstone, and Jessica McClintock. The mall also features in-mall Red Robin and BJ's Restaurant & Brewery locations. [2]
Among the tenants in the Mall's early days were a Worlds Faire food court made up of international restaurants but also including staples like donuts and Kentucky Fried Chicken; a post office, ice skating rink, piano-organ stores, art gallery, pet shop, and other unusual stores, accented by cages of rare birds connecting both levels and water fountains in numerous locations.
On the evening of December 23, 1985[3], two days before Christmas, a twin-engine Beechcraft Baron, executing a missed instrument approach procedure from an approach to runway 19R of Buchanan Field Airport, lost control and crashed into the roof of Macys, killing pilot James Graham (age 67) and two passengers, John Lewis & Brian Oliver, and seriously injuring 84 Christmas shoppers in the crowded mall below, mainly by spraying them with burning fuel. Four of the victims on the ground later died from their injuries. One of those injured was 10 year old Meredith Patterson, who went on to be a television, film, and Broadway actress. The accident brought increased local opposition to the airport, and caused Pacific Southwest Airlines (now part of US Airways) to delay scheduled passenger service that had been planned to start at the beginning of the new year.
The airport had been closed due to thick fog a few hours earlier and pilot Graham attempted to land anyway. After failing to spot the runway at the point where a missed approach should have been made he continued the approach in the hope of finding the runway farther along. When this failed Graham finally began the procedure for a missed approach. He had to do several things at once: Raising the flaps and landing gear, adding power to both engines, and making a left turn. While Graham was distracted by these activities he failed to notice the nose of the plane dropping. He lost altitude and struck the building. Graham was considered to be an expert pilot; he had been a military pilot, ran a flight school at Buchanan Field, was a Certified Flight Instructor, and performed FAA flight checks of other pilots.