Otay Ranch Town Center: Mall and Entertainment Center: First Lifestyle Center in San Diego

On October 27, 2006 Otay Ranch Town Center opened it’s doors to the public of San Diego for a grand opening. Dubbed a Mall and Entertainment Center and the first Lifestyle Center in the area, the new mall fuses the Eastlake and Otay Ranch Villages community. Housing a state of the art cinema, six full service restaurants, a huge bookstore, a sporting goods store, and specialty shops, the entire area encompasses 860,000 of outdoor real estate.

The new Mall and Entertainment Center is centrally located in Chula Vista on Olympic Parkway, with little freeway drive and easy access to most surrounding communities. With the number of restaurants in the new Lifestyle Center, there should be a large amount of sales tax generated for the city of Chula Vista.

There has been a building boom in the Chula Vista area making the site for this new mall a prime real estate choice for the location of this new old-fashioned town square dubbed the new Mall and Entertainment Center. The design of the mall includes a “Main Street” concept, thus allowing cars to park in front of stores as well as to drive past stores. One of the differences in a lifestyle center as opposed to a “Mall” is the fact that they use restaurants clusters, big-box retailers, and movie theaters as anchors as opposed to three large anchor department stores.

Though all of the stores will not be opening on the grand opening day, The Cheesecake Factory, Macy’s and approximately 80 specialty stores opened to name a few. More stores will be opening during phase two which is scheduled over the next twelve to eighteen months. In addition to the stores, there will be a 10,000 square-foot doggie park located in Otay Ranch Town Center. To give you some idea of how family oriented and kid friendly the new lifestyle center is, on the grand opening day, they were valet parking bicycles for shoppers. There is also birthday party rental space available, and a popper fountain for kids to play in, and a chalk garden for the children’s’ drawing pleasure.