Redmond Town Center
The 120-acre site where Redmond Town Center now stands spent six decades as an 18-hole golf course before anyone tried to build a shopping mall on it, and even then, the first plan had to die before the second could succeed. That pattern of reinvention has defined the property ever since. Opened in 1997 as an outdoor mixed-use development along State Route 520, Redmond Town Center arrived just in time to watch the American retail landscape convulse. Department stores that signed leases went bankrupt before opening day. Anchors that seemed permanent shuttered within a decade. And yet the center adapted, absorbing each wave of closures and conversions until its former Macy's became an Amazon office and its former REI became a Volkswagen cloud computing hub. It is a place that tells the story of American commerce in the twenty-first century, not through triumph, but through constant metamorphosis.
The Mall That Almost Was
In 1978, Winmar, a real estate company owned by Safeco Insurance, closed Redmond Golf Links and announced plans for a massive mixed-use development called Maingate. The numbers were staggering: 1,350,000 square feet of retail space, offices, 160 residential units, and 25 to 30 acres of open space spread across the former fairways. Four department stores signed on as anchor tenants: Mervyn's, Frederick & Nelson, The Bon Marche, and JCPenney. The project was controversial from the start. Redmond residents worried the enclosed mall would undermine the walkable character of their downtown, and city council candidates made opposition to Maingate a campaign issue. The city conditionally approved the project in 1988, but by 1992, two of the four anchors had evaporated. Frederick & Nelson went bankrupt, and Federated Department Stores, owner of The Bon Marche, briefly filed for bankruptcy protection. Maingate collapsed under its own ambition.
An Outdoor Reinvention
Winmar came back to the city in 1992 with a fundamentally different concept. Instead of an enclosed mega-mall, Redmond Town Center would be an outdoor complex with walkable streets, a single department store, hotels, offices, and residential spaces. The City Council and residents responded warmly. Groundbreaking came in 1995, historical buildings on the site were preserved, and the development opened in stages beginning in 1997. The finished center included 674,287 square feet of retail space, two Marriott hotels, and major anchors including The Bon Marche, REI, Borders, Zany Brainy, and a Cineplex Odeon theater. Microsoft and AT&T Wireless leased the office buildings. Six office structures of three to five stories divided neatly between the two tech giants, with Microsoft on the east side and AT&T on the west, gave the development a corporate backbone that retail alone could not have provided.
The Revolving Door
The anchor tenants at Redmond Town Center read like a casualty list of American retail. Zany Brainy shuttered in 2003 after FAO Schwarz dissolved the company; Petco took its space in 2004. The Bon Marche was absorbed into Macy's in 2005. Larry's Market closed and cycled through Haggen's, Top Food & Drug, and finally a 24-Hour Fitness gym by 2013. Borders fell to bankruptcy in 2011, and its space sat vacant for five years before being carved into a Ducati dealership, a T-Mobile store, and office space. REI left for Bellevue in 2016, and Restoration Hardware took its building only to close months later. Macy's announced its departure in 2018, shuttering in 2019 as part of a nationwide wave of 100 closures. Bed Bath & Beyond and the Japanese buffet Haiku both closed in 2020. Each departure brought a new tenant, and each new tenant reflected a shifting economy.
From Retail to Tech Campus
The most telling transformation at Redmond Town Center is not what replaced the departed stores, but who. Amazon announced plans in 2020 to house 600 employees in the former Macy's building, planting its flag in Microsoft's hometown. Volkswagen converted the former REI into an automotive cloud computing office. The retail spaces that remain increasingly reflect the diverse demographics of the Eastside: H Mart, a Korean-American supermarket chain, opened in September 2023 in the former Bed Bath & Beyond with a Tous les Jours bakery inside. Daiso, a Japanese variety store, moved into the old Victoria's Secret space. In 2022, the City of Redmond and property owner Fairbourne Properties announced plans to redevelop the center's parking lots into mixed-use buildings with additional retail, residential units, and offices, transforming a car-oriented shopping center into a walkable urban district. The golf course that became a mall that became a tech campus is becoming a neighborhood.
From the Air
Redmond Town Center is located at 47.670N, 122.120W in downtown Redmond, immediately north of State Route 520. From the air, look for the cluster of low-rise commercial buildings and large parking areas just north of the SR-520 corridor, east of the Sammamish River. The development is roughly rectangular, bounded by Cleveland Street to the north and Bear Creek Parkway to the south. Microsoft's main campus is visible approximately 1.5 miles to the northwest. Nearest airports: Renton Municipal (KRNT) 12nm southwest, Boeing Field (KBFI) 14nm west, Snohomish County/Paine Field (KPAE) 22nm north. Best viewed at 3,000-4,000 feet approaching from the west along the SR-520 corridor.