Hawthorne Plaza Shopping Center
Hawthorne Plaza is an abandoned former shopping mall along Hawthorne Boulevard between 120th Street and El Segundo Boulevard in Hawthorne, California. History Opening Hawthorne Plaza was part of the Hawthorne Plaza Redevelopment Project, approved in 1969, which called for the redevelopment of a plot of land. Ground was broken for the mall in January 1974 and most of the mall's 134 stores opened in February 1977. It included an indoor mall with three anchor stores - Montgomery Ward, The Broadway, and J.C. Penney and freestanding 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, Manhattan Village and the Del Amo Fashion Center. Decline Despite initial popularity, the mall's early years were marred by two shootings in 1979. The mall went further into decline in the 1980s and 1990s, due in part to the economic decline of the area after the cutbacks in aerospace jobs, white flight, and to competition from other shopping centers. In 1992, the mall was heavily looted and damaged during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, but sales stayed consistent following the unrest briefly until