Long Beach Towne Center

Long Beach Towne Center is a large power center in northeastern Long Beach, California at Carson St. and the I-605, with 1,000,000 square feet (93,000 m²) of retail space on a 100-acre (40 ha) site.^[1][2] It is the largest shopping center in Long Beach.

Entrance on Carson Street

Tenants

Tenants include:

• Retail stores: Walmart, Sam's Club, Barnes & Noble, Ashley Furniture HomeStore, Bob's Discount Furniture, Petsmart, Old Navy, Michaels Stores, IKEA Design Studio, Lowe's^[1]
• Restaurants: TGI Fridays, In-N-Out Burger, Chick-fil-A, Lucille's Smokehouse, Roadhouse Grill (steakhouse)
• Entertainment: Regal Cinemas, Dave & Buster's^[1]

History

The site was empty until 1960, when the United States Navy opened a military hospital on the site. In 1995, operations were transferred to the Veterans Administration, which closed the hospital and moved patients to the VA Long Beach Healthcare System facility near California State University, Long Beach. After disputes with the city of Lakewood over reuse plans, construction began in 1997 and finished in 1999.^[3][4]

In August 2019, the Long Beach Planning Commission approved a plan to demolish about 30,000 square feet of the existing space to make way for a new Dave & Buster's location.^[5] In early 2020, the center's food court — which had tenants such as Panda Express, Subway, and Wetzel's Pretzels as tenants at various times — was torn down.^[6] It was originally scheduled to open in mid-2020, but work was halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Work resumed in the summer of 2021, and the location opened on September 26, 2022.^[6][7]

In 2021, IKEA announced that it would open a smaller-format, 8,000-square-foot (740 m²) "planning studio" stores in the center,^[8] which opened in 2022.^[9]

References

1. "Site plan, Long Beach Towne Center", Vestar
2. "Long Beach Towne Center". Vestar. Retrieved 2023-03-06.
3. "History", Long Beach Tourism official site
4. "Construction to begin on shopping center". Los Angeles Times. August 2, 1997.
5. Munguia, Hayley (2019-08-23). "Dave and Buster's will be first phase of Long Beach Towne Center makeover". Press Telegram. from the original on 2022-10-15. Retrieved 2023-03-06.
6. "Construction resumes on Dave & Buster's at Long Beach Towne Center". Orange County Breeze. 2021-08-06. from the original on 2022-06-26. Retrieved 2023-03-06.
7. Guzman, Richard (2022-09-27). "Dave & Buster's opens at Long Beach Towne Center". Press Telegram. from the original on 2022-12-01. Retrieved 2023-03-06.
8. Smith, Kevin (November 4, 2021). "IKEA downsizes, with 'planning studio' on tap for Long Beach". Long Beach Press-Telegram. Retrieved 5 November 2022.
9. "IKEA planning studio to open at Towne Center next week • Long Beach Business Journal". Long Beach Business Journal. 2022-08-25. Retrieved 2023-03-06.

33°49′46″N 118°05′12″W / 33.8294°N 118.0867°W / 33.8294; -118.0867