Mall 205; Portland, Oregon

Mall 205 in Portland, Oregon

Trudging along for over 30 years, Mall 205 left an indelible mark on shoppers located on the east side of Portland, Oregon.  The mall opened in 1970 anchored by Montgomery Ward and White Front department stores, with enclosed in-line space between them.  White Front went out of business in the late 1970s, but the mall didn’t suffer.  Instead, it converted White Front’s space into more space for stores and added an Emporium location which would also close.  

Demand was high in this mall, which filled (and continues to fill) a shopping void between several larger malls in the Portland area, all within a 10 minute drive via expressways: Lloyd Center to the west near central Portland, Westfield Vancouver Mall to the north, and the large Clackamas Town Center to the south.  The mall chugged along into the 80s and through the 90s and was going just fine until a devastating closure in 2001 when Montgomery Ward departed as that chain went out of business nationwide

Following the devastating departure of Montgomery Ward, vacant space inside Mall 205 shot up fast.  Almost immediately, local mall owner Center Oak Properties decided a radical revamp of the mall was in order.  In 2002, Mall 205 got a radical facelift – the first and only major renovation the center received.  Home Depot, Target and 24 Hour Fitness stepped in where Montgomery Ward left the reigns and the mall’s interior received brand new fixtures, flooring, ceiling, and the whole kitchen sink.  Part of the overhaul was also a complete change in the mall’s blank, walled exterior, giving it a downtown look complete with glass storefronts, colorful awnings and tree-lined sidewalks. Inside, the mall has a new food court, ceiling and floor. The parking lot was also extensively renovated with all-new light fixtures, a system of rectangular grids with 20-foot-wide sidewalks and 900 new trees. A ditch for catching parking lot runoff looks more like a park, complete with plantings and bird feeders.

Mall 205 remains successful today as it ever was, existing mostly as an ancillary mall to the larger centers it supports.  Some of its tenants include Famous Footwear, a bakery, car stereo place, pizza parlor, and other shops and services.  A final notable thing about the mall is that it’s one of two enclosed malls I can think of named after an interstate.  The other was called Mall 189 in Burlington, Vermont, and has since been disenclosed.  Thankfully, this is one of the few mall renovations that allowed for enclosure.  I took the pictures in November 2005. 

Mall 205 sign in Portland, Oregon Mall 205 in Portland, Oregon Mall 205 in Portland, Oregon

Mall 205 in Portland, Oregon Mall 205 in Portland, Oregon near Mall 205 in Portland, Oregon

49 Responses to “Mall 205; Portland, Oregon”

  1. Interesting story here and an inspiring one of how to keep a troubled mall alive when you’ve got the right ideas and money allocated for it. This mall did fall within the bounds of luck; they had the ability to include prime anchor stores like Target, BB&B, and Home Depot – some areas already have them off or near mall grounds leaving the malls themselves to face anchor doom.

    They could’ve, however, done something about that “Mall 205″ name seeing as if they just couldn’t think of a slightly more descriptive name.

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  2. Does that Home Depot open into the mall? I think that may be the only time I’ve ever seen that.

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  3. I believe that it does. Center Oak Properties used to have a lease plan of the mall but it seems to have disappeared.

    At some point there was a Rite Aid in the mall too, it used to be another drugstore. The Home Depot takes up the former Emporium site if I’m not mistaken.

    The lease plan showed a Borders Express proposed in the food court; it appears to be empty in the pictures. Perhaps it was just a Walden that closed or a proposal that never came to be.

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  4. Seems to be a pleasant little mall, and a great comeback story.

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  5. In response to Caldor’s post there is another Home Depot that “sort of” opens out into a mall. The Turfland Mall in Lexington, KY replaced its closed Montgomery Ward with a Home Depot. While the main store does not have a mall entrance the tool rental center does if my memory serves me correctly.

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  6. Several Midwestern malls are/were anchored by Menard’s, which is a Midwestern competitor to Home Depot. I’m too lazy to look them all up, but I know that Michigan has two malls anchored by Menard’s – Delta Plaza in Escanaba and Centerpointe Mall in Grand Rapids. Both open into the mall, and neither store is very big either. Escanaba’s, in fact, is only in the 50K square foot range! (Incredibly, it was a former Woolworth.)

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  7. Home Depot also has a location on a former Ward’s pad that was an original anchor for Waukegan’s (IL) Belvedere Mall. I’m not sure if this particular location opens up into the mall though.

    Nice to read these stories of a mall that was close to dead, only to be resurrected by some smart heads at the company that owns the property. I like the low rambling appearance and diffused lighting shown in these images. It sort of harkens back to the styles of older malls, but with modern touches.

    I agree though, that they could also have thought up a new name.

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  8. On the surface this sounds like a happy comeback for Mall 205 but I go there not infrequently and the mall itself, the small space stores, are not robust. The anchors are faring well. I would estimate up to 25% vacancy rate, and lots of the little spaces are unable to sustain even low-rent tenants. Last I checked, the makeshift glamour shots place had gone belly-up. What this ambitious anchoring has done has made the anchors destinations while the interior of the mall, which is tiny, is mostly overlooked. There is a homeschooling store that gets traffic and a couple other businesses I’m not able to name, but for food there’s very little besides Pizza Schmizza. There is a very visible vacancy to your left if you look at that picture that looks into the 24-Hour Fitness. There was a fifties-themed food purveyor on the corner, since 205 lacks a food court per se, and the fifties place moved out leaving visible signs of pulling up stakes.
    The problem is that if you’re that far east in Portland, it’s not an economically robust area, and Mall 205 reflects this. The upshot is that the 24 Hour Fitness is rarely full now that a fancier location is finished right off of Interstate 84, so to avoid the rush, I can go there and go to my favorite Target. ;}
    I hope to do a current vacancy count one day. I’ll post findings here.

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  9. Although the mall opened in 1970, I-205 past the mall did not open until 1983. If I remember correctly, Mall 205 had originally been designed by Victor Gruen and Associates. California based White Front had opened stores in the north and south ends of the Seattle area in the mid-late 1960s and had added stores in Everett, Bellevue, Tacoma, and Portland (Mall 205) around 1970.

    The Everett store was built at the opposite end of Everett Mall from Sears and sat vacant for a few years after the White Front chain went out of business in the 70s. The store became a branch of The Bon Marche in 1977 and was later renamed Bon-Macy’s. It is now Macy’s. The North Seattle White Front is now a Kmart, the Bellevue and Burien (south of Seattle) stores Fred Meyer. The Tacoma White Front has been split up into smaller stores and shops. Part of the building was a Jafco/BEST.

    The Mall 205 White Front was divided up into smaller anchors. The end of the building was a 3 screen cinema without an interior entrance to the mall. Other parts of the former White Front building became Payless Drugs (eventually purchased by Rite Aid) and Emporium, a Eugene Oregon based junior department store that is now defunct.

    In the days of Sears and Montgomery Ward catalogs, the Sears Pacific Northwest catalog warehouse was in Seattle and the Wards warehouse was in Portland. Both warehouses had adjacent stores. It seems that Wards located its stores for the most part at second tier malls in the Portland area while Sears and J C Penney, along with stores such as Meier and Frank (now Macy’s) and Nordstrom were located at the first tier malls. In addition to the central and Mall 205 stores, Wards had a store at Jantzen Beach Center, a free standing store in Beaverton, and finally in 1981 a store at a first tier mall, Clackamas Town Center. Jantzen Beach Center, originally a mall built circa 1970, has been mostly rebuilt as a power center. I think that the mall wing that connects the former Wards with Kmart is still standing. The Jantzen Beach Wards, like the Mall 205 wards, is now a Target.

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  10. What was it like before renovation?

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  11. Has this mall ever had a cinema?

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  12. Here’s an interesting article from 1996 about a proposed addition that never happened.

    http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/stories/1996/06/24/story3.html?page=1

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  13. What’s this about the waterslides in the mall over at DeadMalls.com? Won’t that make the whole mall smell like chlorine?

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  14. http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=6901 has an article on Mall 205. And where is Center Oak’s website?

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  15. HOORAY! Here’s the URL (click on my name) to the page with the Leasing PDF. I’m so sorry for quadruple posting!

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  16. i would like to know the name of the homeschooling store located in Mall 205 in Portland Oregon if someone actually knows the name. thanks so very much

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  17. That Target’s facade looks very bland and old. Does anyone else think so? Considering the innovative Home Depot entrance, you’d think Target would have an interesting storefront.

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  18. Also, I have never seen a Claire’s storefront like that. What era would that be from? I can think of maybe 4 other storefronts that they have had too.

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  19. Claire’s unusual facade shows that Claire’s was operating before the major renovation.

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  20. Yeah, I figured. But I have never seen that facade before. I know before they remodeled everything, their logo in the 1990s/early 00s looked like this: http://www.alpenamall.com/images/claires.jpg. And I think there’s an even older one lurking around here too.

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  21. I’ve only seen two Claire’s with that square logo — that very store at Alpena Mall, plus the one at Genesee Valley Center in Flint. The store at Universal Mall had a labelscar matching the logo pictured above; Claire’s later took over the old After Thoughts store in the same mall and has since closed.

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  22. http://flickr.com/photos/cafemama/422751444/

    This is Mall 205, and the outparcel auto center is obviously of the old Wards. What is it used for now?

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  23. I arranged all the stores in the leasing plan plus some more snooping into this handy-dandy Mall 205 store list. Please send in corrections and additions for the next edition of this.

    HOME DEPOT BLOCK AND FOOD COURT
    The Home Depot (Anchor): Appears to lack a Garden Center.
    Learning Palace: The aforementioned homeschooling store.
    Saigon Cuisine: Seems to be Vietnamese food.
    Wok Express: Likely Chinese food.
    Waz-Wan: Unknown food court store. Sounds vaguely Asian.
    Subway: Likely a new addition after renovation.
    La Sierra: Unknown food court store.
    Ozzie’s: Unknown food court store.

    24 HOUR FITNESS BLOCK
    24 Hour Fitness (Anchor)
    Blue Star Diner: A 1950s themed diner that has gone out of business.
    Kase Confections: A cake shop that has likely gone out of business.
    GNC: Likely operating before renovations.
    Image Star Shots: A “makeshift glamour shots” place. Out of business.
    Perfect Look: “Family Haircare without the appointments”! Likely around before renovation.
    Claire’s Boutique: The distinct neon sign says it was operating before the renovation.

    TARGET BLOCK
    Target (Anchor): Two stories. Despite the size, it isn’t a hypermarket.
    Bed Bath & Beyond (Anchor)
    Performance Bike: “For people for love bikes”. Probably sells bikes and bike parts.
    Beauty Nails: Could be out of business.
    Bed Bath & Beyond (Anchor)
    Harry Ritchie Jewelry: A jewelry store.
    Van Duyns: Unknown.
    Smart Wireless: A cellular store.
    Pizza Schmizza: A regional pizza chain.
    McMenamins Bar & Grill: I think it has taken the place of the proposed Daphne’s Greek Cafe.
    Hallmark: Do we need to explain this?
    Dress Barn: Clothing store.
    Famous Footwear: Shoe store.
    Oregon Air National Guard: Likely operating before renovations.
    BCTI: A mysterious kiosk listed on the leasing plan.

    FORMER STORES (by no means complete)
    Troutman’s Emporium: Space has been swallowed up plus some by The Home Depot.
    White Front: Currently the 24 Hour Fitness.
    Montgomery Ward: In former Target space.

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  24. The old Ward’s outbuilding is being renovated into what appears to be a small strip mall type setting.

    To add a bit of info:

    Performance Bike: It does sell bikes and bike gear.
    Van Duyns: Chocolatier
    McMenamins: I don’t think there’s one in the mall, but I’ll know for sure today as I’m heading to The Learning Palace after work.
    The Learning Palace: It’s not as much a homeschooling store as it is an educational store in general.
    Beauty Nails: The last I saw was it was still around.

    I’ll submit more info after I visit if anything is different from what’s been submitted above.

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  25. One thing I’m a bit confused about is the waterslides tower. It’s mentioned on DeadMalls.com about a tower in the center of the mall and older aerial photos prove that this is possible (as the roof on the Home Depot side was redone). Frankly, a waterpark inside a SMALL mall is pretty unimaginable to me. Please explain, somebody…Pictures would be nice, if possible.

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  26. This place used to have a new-and-used video game store called “Game Trader” which was excellent for finding rare and unusual games. I wish somebody’d taken a pic of it, as it left in 2003. I bought an unopened Super NES game there one year earlier. You just didn’t find those in proper retail anymore.

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  27. In the early to mid 1980’s, there were several ‘hydrotube’ waterslides in the Portland area. Many were in or near malls (Jantzen Beach Center, Washington Square, Eastport Plaza) and a stand-alone slide in Vancouver, WA. At the time, they were the ‘hot new attraction.’ I remember going to the Jantzen Beach one for a birthday party in 1985. Not sure if this is the true reason, but supposedly they were shut down due to insurance/lawsuit reasons.

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  28. Wait, so it was waterslides in the middle of the mall? I’m still dreadfully confused on that aspect…

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  29. Apparently, Mall 205 is doing badly now. The interior is virtually vacant: here’s a quote from http://deadmalls.wordpress.com, deadmalls.com new “minor updates” site:

    “The first time I went to the mall in 2003 I seem to remember the food court area had four or five food venders. Only one little food place remained in February 2008. Inside, the mall truly looked depressingly barren.”

    Shock and dismay. When do you think the anchors will seal off mall entrances?

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  30. All of the “big box” stores at Mall 205 would appear to be doing well – Target, Home Depot, Famous Footwear, as well as a 24 Hour Fitness, and a store called Performance Bike. All of these stores have entrances to the outside as well as to the mall, which seems to be a key distinction. In addition there is a Bed, Bath, and Beyond which has only mall access, but appears to be successful too. Almost all of the interior-only stores have closed, except for a Dress Barn, a GNC, a Van Duyn chocolates store, a jewelry store and a glamour shots store. There is also a store called Learning Palace, which is something of an educational toy store, and which still seems to be doing OK, and a place that does nails. The only restaurants are a Pizza Schmizza located near one of the entrances, and a deli called Ozzies located in what was once their food court. At one time the food court had a Subway and McDonald’s Express among it’s six parcels, but apparently the lack of foot traffic killed them as well. The times I’ve been in this mall in the last few years, you could fire a cannon down the main corridor and you wouldn’t come close to hitting anyone. It’s too bad because it used to be a cool place to hang out when I was a pre-teen in the 80’s, with an arcade, a four-plex, a B. Dalton, a Spencer Gifts, and a Hickory Farms among the sixty-odd stores. It will be interesting to see if they are able to do anything to change this mall’s situation in the coming years, perhaps by tearing down the interior corridors, or if they just let it go on as is.

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  31. What about Oregon Air National Guard? So, that leaves about 11 in-line stores left. Sucks.

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  32. the question about the “hydrotube” waterpark in the mall: those hydrotube waterslides in the 1970’s/80’s were big green fiberglass pipes that would have water running through them. you slid down them and got dumped into a pool. they were extremely popular for the few years they were in business. there were a couple of standalone hydrotube places in salem, or at the time of their existence. they were alot of fun. they got sued by a parent who didn’t understand that their kid was obviously not real smart to stop in the middle of one. if your kid stopped in the middle of a crosswalk so a car would hit them, would you sue the city and close the road forever? don’t think so. not sure why that got blown so far out of proportion?

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  33. There’s a video on YouTube on Mall 205, basically some teenagers fooling around in there. Even though it was added a month ago, I don’t when it was filmed, and there’s definitely some empty feeling. Great mall shots, though…

    http://youtube.com/watch?v=FxOsVGr9hwA

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  34. 24 Hour Fitness here has a pool for water exercise stuff…like the waterslides, except different.

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  35. I cannot be certain because it was so long ago and my mother, who could probably confirm this for me, is deceased. However, I think that this is the mall we used to go to when we lived in Portland for approximately a year between 1974 and 1975. I have very few clear memories of my time living in Oregon because I was very young, but a few things stand out. Going to the Montgomery Ward’s store at whatever mall we frequented there is one. Back at this time, some stores had these little booths that greatly resemble the instant picture booths that used to be so popular, but that showed cartoon shorts for a dime or a quarter. I vividly remember going into a red cartoon booth at Ward’s and watching Yogi Bear and Deputy Dog shorts. I also remember being in there one day and experiencing a strange, overpowering smell like bad fried chicken. It had something to do with another little kid who was there, but I can’t remember if he was actually eating chicken or if he just smelled funny…(kind of mean, but it had to be something for me to remember it almost 35 years later!) I have no memories of the mall itself, just the Ward’s store, but based on where I think we lived and the names of the other malls, I’m thinking this has to be the one. Glad it’s still alive and kicking.

    By the way, does anyone from that area know anything about a little place we used to go to called Heidi’s? I’m thinking it had a Swiss Chalet theme to it and maybe it was near Mt. Hood. I remember going there and seeing it like something out of a fairy tale. I would always get their hot chocolate, which they served with a fun little plastic monkey hanging off the edge. Not very Swiss, but I loved them. They were transparent and came in bright colors. There was also some kind of little theme park in the area out there which had fairytale stuff in it…there was some kind of tunnel that looked like you were going into the mouth of the Wicked Witch from Snow White. I guess I was doing just fine until my dad said, “Ooh, let’s go into the witch’s mouth!” at which point I flipped out.

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  36. Erika: One of the things I’ve heard about the “old Mall 205″ is that it was “quite dark inside, lit only by the occasional fluorescent light” and that it had a waterslide in it at one point.

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  37. I definitely don’t remember a waterslide, but again my only true memories of this place were within the Montgomery Ward’s store and not the inner mall itself, though I remember seeing the mall from the outside. I just wondered if maybe this was the same place. It was so long ago that my few memories of living in Portland are very murky.

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  38. Heidi’s was out on Hwy 26 in Boring heading towards Mt. Hood. There was a restaurant and gift shops and mini theme park. It did have a Swiss theme. We used to stop there often and I remember the hot chocolate monkeys too.

    It was sold and is now called Ashley’s and many of the out buildings have gone through many changes. There is a A & W Rootbeer drive in there now too. There was a cute tea room but she went under.

    There is a Heidi’s restaurant still open in Gresham under the original owners.

    The Home Depot does open into the mall. It does have a garden center. The only way into the BB & B is through the mall. There are many empty stores, sadly. Claires and the recruitment center do pre-date the remodel. That Claires has been there a long long time.

    There is a Red Robin and an Olive Garden on the pad as well as Baja Fresh and that Panda fast Chinese. The McMennemin’s is across the street.

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  39. Thanks, Leeanne! I’m glad to know I wasn’t hallucinating the whole Heidi’s thing. I have to add that in 1974 I was only 2, so it is remarkable that I have any Portland memories at all. The only other 2 things that stick out to me are a terrifying sledding incident on Mt. Hood; I can vividly see these two long-haired guys standing along the side of the hill laughing at me as I flew by. I also remember standing at the fence separating my yard from my neighbor’s, shoving weeds through at their geese. They actually ate it and didn’t bite me.

    If I ever come back to Oregon, I will have to check out the Heidi’s that remains.

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  40. There also used to be a Mrs. Fields cookie down where the food court is now and a DMV which obviously brought alot of business to the mall. They had a clothing store that teens could buy very inexpensive clothes at, my friends and I used to shop there. I sure do miss those days.

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  41. Jonah, you are sadly right; 205 is plummeting once more. The Target and the Home Depot still get great business, but nobody goes in between and it really shows now. The Hallmark is gone and the Learning Palace, which was there BEFORE the renovation, has just closed shop as I type this.

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  42. Erika,
    The big witch’s mouth that you remember, may actually be at the Enchanted Forest, just south of Salem, Oregon. It is still there, it is an amusement park with small roller coasters,little trails hat lead to different displays, like Snow White, Alice in Wonderland, the mouth of the witch, little tunnels, and a frontier village with gift shop. It is only open during the summer months.
    My wife and I went to the grand opening of the White Front at Mall 205. Our oldest son worked there in the early 90’s Time flies when you are having fun.

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  43. Actually our son worked at Montgomery Wards, not White Front.

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  44. Hi, It’s really interesting to hear about these old places. I lived in Vancouver and when I was a child my parents used to shop at a store called “Bazaar” on 82nd Ave I believe. This would have been the late 60’s and early 70’s. Does anyone else have a recollection of this store. I’d like to find out more information on it. I also remember Jafco and it seemed like there were several of them. Any input would be greatly appreciated !

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    ECD Reply:

    @Michael,

    BAZAAR was on 82nd & Division, it was a general merchandise retailer like K-mart. Next to it was a grocery called ‘MR. C’s’. Then it became Builder’s Square, a Home Depot type store and the grocery became an Albertson’s which had moved up the street from Eastport Plaza, on 82nd & Holgate. Then Albertson’s moved out into a new store built next to GI Joe’s at Eastport after the mall was demo’d and Builder’s Square closed down. It sat empty several years until Portland Community College converted it into the ‘SOUTHEAST CENTER’ and it is a community college campus now.

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  45. I’ve grown up in the SE Portland area. I remember Mall 205 before it “went under”. To my knowledge, there was never a waterslide there. However, there was a water park of sorts at Eastport Plaza, a mall that used to exist about 10 minutes south of Mall 205. Eastport Plaza was torn down years ago for a Wal-Mart and cinema. But I definitely remember thinking that the coolest thing at the old Eastport Plaza mall was the waterslide. It was an indoor mall as well, however it died off…much like Mall 205 is now. Makes me sad. :(

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  46. The Hydrotube was right outside of the GI Joes at Eastport Plaza, not at Mall 205. There was also one at Jantzen Beach and Washington Square. I only know this because I found a twenty dollar bill and my childhood best friend and I spent an entire Saturday in the Hydrotube. Seriously from Open to close. I remember that you’d come splashing out into the pool inside the mall. There were glass walls into the mall and there were always a ton of shoppers watching the tubers. Of course, Ben and I were probably some of the reasons they got shut down. We would stop ourselves just around the first turn and wait for the other to catch up. Then we’d fly down and try to do tricks splashing into the pool…Good Times!

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  47. There was DEFINITELY a waterslide in Mall 205 at some point. I never did see it, since I was born in ‘85, and that was around the time they were in the mall. I distinctly remember the tower though, it was in the middle of the east-to-west walkway, and directly down from the north entrance as well. Right in the middle.

    I remember the jewelry shop and candy shop on the corners as you turned into the walkway. There was a pretzel cart at the tower…I loved those pretzels.

    Recently I started drawing a map of the mall and stores I remembered, like Scamp’s, B. Dalton, Game Trader, Regis, Perfect Look, the Aladdin’s Castle arcade….those last four places moved spots a couple of times each, too. I miss the old days of that mall, going for an A&W hot dog, fries, and float….playing in the arcade…..going through KB Toys and Ward’s. I wish I could go back.

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    ECD Reply:

    @Matt,

    The tower was at Eastport. It was torn down when the waterslide closed. I worked at GI Joe’s for 12 years, I saw it come down. I also saw Mall 205 go up and it never had a waterslide. Been here since 1970.

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