Washington Square

Washington Square is a shopping mall in the city of Tigard, Oregon, United States. Located in the Portland metropolitan area along Oregon Route 217, the shopping complex is one of the top grossing malls per square foot in the United States, with sales of $716/ft². Opened in 1973, the mall is currently managed and co-owned by The Macerich Company, a real estate investment trust, and is anchored by Macy's, Nordstrom, JCPenney, Apple Store, and Dick's Sporting Goods. History On May 3, 1972, plans for Oregon's largest shopping mall at that time were announced by Winmar Pacific, Inc., a developer bought by Safeco in 1967. It was to be a development with space for 100 stores. The mall was to include over on in an L-shaped pattern. On August 16, 1973, Meier & Frank became the first tenant to open at the mall. Sears and Lipman's then opened that November, followed by Liberty House and Nordstrom during the summer of 1974. The grand opening of the facility began on February 21, 1974. It is located southwest of Portland in an area known as Progress, which at the time was entirely unincorporated and located between the cities of Beaverton and Tigard. In April 1978, the Liberty House store, located on the mall's north side, was taken over by Frederick & Nelson (F&N). The following year, Frederick & Nelson acquired the entire Lipman's chain, and in connection with that acquisition, F&N moved within the mall from the space it had occupied for only one year to the much larger ex-Lipman's space, on the mall's west side. Mervyn's took over the space vacated by F&N and originally occupied by Liberty House, opening its store in October 1979. In 1986, the cities of Beaverton, Tigard, and Portland fought to annex the unincorporated territory on which the mall was located. Tigard was awarded the right to annex Washington Square along with other adjacent properties that contain Lincoln Center and the Embassy Suites Hotel. Following Frederick & Nelson's bankruptcy and store closure in January 1991, Nordstrom acquired the vacant space and demolished it, constructing a larger replacement for its existing store; this new Nordstrom opened in 1994. At that time, the former Nordstrom space was acquired by the mall and reconfigured as a food court and additional retail space, coinciding with the renovation of the mall. By the mid-1990s the mall had an average sales per square foot that placed it in the top 10% of malls nationwide.