Santa Maria Town Center

The Hahn Company developed Santa Maria Town Center, opening in 1976 in Santa Maria, California, at the junction of Routes 135 and 166, anchored at opening by Gottschalks and Sears alongside a three-screen United Artists cinema. The property remains the only enclosed shopping center in Santa Barbara County and one of the largest on California’s Central Coast.

The cinema later operated under the Edwards Theatres brand before ultimately becoming a Regal Cinema; the original United Artists screen was sold to Wallace Theater Corporation in 1996 and ran as a discount venue until its own closure in 2001. In September 2018, the mall itself, excluding its remaining anchor stores and parking garages, was sold to an undisclosed global insurance company for $21.5 million; Sears closed in February 2020 after 44 years of continuous operation, as part of Transformco’s broader 51-store national closure announcement.

At roughly 600,000 sqft across 25 acres, the property carries 69 stores and eateries anchored by Macy’s, El Super Market and a Regal Cinema, with Kay Jewelers, Bath & Body Works and Foot Locker among the specialty tenants. Two three-level parking garages provide 3,315 total spaces. Spinoso Real Estate Group currently manages the property.

That 44-year Sears tenancy, ending only in 2020 as part of the retailer’s broader national wind-down, alongside a 2018 sale that carved the mall itself out from its own anchor buildings and parking structures as a separate transaction, reflects how thoroughly institutional ownership of aging American regional malls has fragmented property-by-property even at a single site, with anchor buildings, parking infrastructure and the enclosed mall core increasingly held and transacted as genuinely separate real estate assets.