Comments on: Coddingtown Mall; Santa Rosa, California

By: Victoria

Victoria — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 21:37:30 +0000

@Jason, The old cinema wasn’t completely torn down, it’s now a Beverly’s craft store.
The hotel used to be one of the premiere places to stay in the city. Los Robles Lodge.

By: Dan P.

Dan P. — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 07:03:54 +0000

@Paul, Emporium didn’t fold, they were bought by then-Macy’s-parent Federated. (Federated bought Macy’s in the early 90s. Later, in the mid-2000s, Federated renamed itself Macy’s and renamed all its non-Macy’s stores Macy’s.)

By: Jason

Jason — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 22:05:10 +0000

A few more tidbits:
Coddingtown had cinemas in a detached building in the 1980s. They were really beat up by the time they were torn down sometime in the 1990s, maybe early 2000s.
There’s an abandoned motor-lodge property right next door…complete with plywood covered window openings (I think the actual windows were sold at auction!) and a cyclone rent-a-fence surrounding it. In the next economic boom, maybe someone will acquire both properties and combine them into a mega-center…or, maybe not…

By: Jason

Jason — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 21:54:33 +0000

@Andy, Sears has a reasonably successfull location at the mall in downtown Santa Rosa. And that’s a rather interesting store. It was an old fashioned, free standing downtown department store. When Santa Rosa Plaza was built in the 1980s, it engulfed that old Sear’s store. The interior was completely updated, but I would suspect some of the ‘behind-the-scenes” areas are still from that original building. I think I remember riding WOODEN escalators in that original store, but people tell me I’m crazy! It would have been about 1978 or 1979.

By: LaRae Meadows

LaRae Meadows — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 05:16:22 +0000

Hello Caldor ,

I would love to republish this on EmpireReport.org, if you’ll give me permission.

LaRae

By: DJ

DJ — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 07:06:49 +0000

@Caldor, Kohl’s in Santa Rosa is located just down the street a little ways from Coddingtown (just North of K-mart) in a free standing two or three story building that they just built a few years ago.

Kohl’s passed on the downtown Santa Rosa Mall former Mervyn’s location because of this.

Kohl’s took over many of the former northern California Mervyn’s locations but passed on a few of them here and there. The Downtown Santa Rosa Mall was one of the locations they passed on as well as Petalima.

By: Caldor

Caldor — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:12:08 +0000

@Gary, Either would make a good fit at the mall. Just two things:

The vacant Gottschalks is located in the back of the mall. I’m pretty sure Target wouldn’t want the space for that reason alone–when they locate in malls, they like to have a placement where their customers can easily come in/out without going into the mall, if they choose.

Santa Rosa Plaza, the larger and more successful mall located in downtown Santa Rosa, is anchored by Macy’s and Sears and also has a (smaller) vacant anchor space left by Mervyn’s. This would actually make a more ideal fit for Kohls than the Gottschalks simply because the store plate size is more appropriate. That space in SR Plaza is really not expandable, and because it’s downtown, I doubt Target would be interested.

So *really* the best solution is for Kohls to move into SR Plaza and Target to suck it up and move into the back of Coddingtown, but I don’t know if they’d really be interested.

By: Gary

Gary — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:55:43 +0000

A Target-type anchor may work, or what about a Kohl’s?

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:46:49 +0000

@TenPoundHammer, I didn’t live in Santa Rosa so I only visited Coddingtown infrequently. I know there was a Roos/Atkins mens store (every mall in NorCal had one) and maybe a Grodins. In those days, all malls had locally owned stores, so there’s a good likelihood that Coddingtown had one too.

TenPoundHammer: IIRC, Joseph Magnin occupied the lower right-hand corner spot in the arial photo above, facing the parking lot. It wasn’t a freestanding location, but I seem to remember it wasn’t in the inside of the mall.

By: Andy

Andy — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 12:37:13 +0000

Long time lurker, first time poster. Thanks for the article, I visited Coddingtown in mid-July while in Santa Rosa for the Schulz museum, and I wanted to add a couple points:
1. The mall does make mention of Schulz, it even points out in a couple places where he used to shop in the mall (And you can guess I went to every spot)
2. I fully scoured the interior of the mall (near triple digit heat prevented me from doing the exterior), and the Gottschalk’s space in my view is going to be real hard to fill; not only with the economy, but with the lack of anchors out there. Sears if they can get their head out of the ground maybe; or maybe a Target type tenant?