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OC cities smart to rethink zoning strategies on former mall sites

May 3, 2026

During the 25 years that consumed the back half of the 1950s and every bit of the 60s and 70s, Orange County shed the last remnants of its agrarian roots to become ground zero for that uniquely American citadel of consumption: The shopping mall.

From 1958 to 1979 malls rose like mushrooms from the county’s flatlands, drawing millions of shoppers and their cash-stuffed wallets to cities from Costa Mesa, Laguna Hills and Newport Beach to Anaheim and Buena Park, Westminster and Huntington Beach, Orange and Santa Ana, Brea and Mission Viejo.

For three generations these cities rode the sales-tax gravy train their malls produced. Their flush General Funds fueled the growth of their police and fire departments, maintained their parks and financed new ones, kept their streets paved, their storm drains and gutters clear and their sidewalks in good repair.

But that era has passed.

Roughed up and bruised by the Amazon blitzkrieg and COVID-19 pandemic, most of the malls that once powered Orange County’s conspicuous consumption economy are either limping relics of a bygone era, no longer standing (the Village at Orange mall) or in some stage of redevelopment (the Brea, Westminster and Laguna Hills malls).

This wholesale transformation of the county’s retail landscape isn’t only the casualty of tech savvy consumer preferences for the path of least resistance when it comes to shopping. It’s also a catalyst that’s driving the most significant shift in land-use policy and zoning regulations in a generation.

Indeed, Orange County’s “mall” cities are navigating through a perfect storm. Pressed by gargantuan state housing mandates, saddled with upside-down budgets, and dogged by an oversupply of obsolete commercially zoned land, “mall” cities are wisely ditching their fallow “fiscal zoning” strategies emphasizing commercial retail zoning in favor of mixed-use zoning that integrates new housing to feed right-sized retail uses focused on daily needs, dining, personal services and entertainment.

In Westminster, bulldozers are dismantling what remains of the once mighty Westminster Mall to make way for an 83-acre mixed-use development to include 2,250 homes and 220,000 square feet of retail space and restaurant uses, down from the mall’s original 1.36 million square feet of storefronts. The Westminster Mall Specific Plan – the zoning blueprint adopted by the City to implement a complete re-engineering of the 100-acre property’s tax base – established the framework for a mixed-use community to replace a declining asset with high-value improvements that will generate multiple, more stable revenues streams for the city’s General Fund.

Meanwhile, 380 apartments are under construction on 15 acres of the Brea Mall property once occupied, in part, by the carcass of a long-closed Sears store. City officials, seeking to reboot the mall property’s tax base, paved the way for the project by scuttling the property’s stale commercial designation in its general plan and zoning code in favor of a mixed-use scheme.

In Orange, where city officials are grappling with a yawning structural budget deficit, near zero population growth, and flat sales tax revenues over the last decade, a second attempt is under way to craft a Specific Plan for the 60-acre property once home to the Village at Orange mall. Closed and demolished in 2024 along with a long-vacant J.C. Penney store, the former mall is now a daily needs community shopping center anchored by Walmart, Sprouts, HomeGoods and Trader Joe’s. The balance of the property is occupied by a closed and mostly vacant Sears, as well as 14 acres of little-used parking lot and vacant land where the mall and J.C. Penney once stood. The center’s property owners are hoping city officials and the community back a mixed-use vision that integrates for-sale homes into the center as the best way to feed the remaining retail tenants, recharge the property’s tax base and boost revenues to the city.

It takes vision to shed the old zone-for-sales-tax paradigm in favor of mixed-use planning strategies to revitalize Orange County’s retail relics. But by integrating new homes, daily needs and essential services into a single footprint, OC cities are setting the stage for a built-in customer base that sustains local businesses regardless of broader retail trends. It’s this kind of diversification that stabilizes municipal tax revenue, ensuring local governments and their budgets are not overly dependent on a single, volatile sector.

Byron de Arakal is a land use and entitlement consultant. He was a Costa Mesa Planning Commissioner from 2017 to 2023, serving four years as the Commission’s chairman. He is a fourth-generation Californian.

Orange County Register

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OC cities smart to rethink zoning strategies on former mall sites

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