What it is
Chandler Fashion Center is the East Valley’s enclosed mall, 1.3 million square feet at the corner where the Loop 101 ends and the Loop 202 begins, opened by Westcor on October 19, 2001 and owned by Macerich since the year after. It was the first big enclosed mall built in the Phoenix area in years when it opened, with Nordstrom, Sears, Dillard’s, Robinsons-May and a Harkins as anchors, and it has spent the last decade doing what every enclosed mall in America has had to do: replace the department stores that left.
It has done it better than most. Sears closed after 2018 and Nordstrom after 2020, and into their boxes went Scheels, the Midwestern sporting-goods giant, which opened its first Arizona store here on September 30, 2023 with 250,000 square feet, an indoor Ferris wheel and an aquarium; Round1 Bowling & Arcade, which opened on the Sears’s first floor in February 2025; and Seafood City, the Filipino supermarket chain, which opened Arizona’s first store on the second floor in July 2026. Dillard’s and Macy’s remain, 180-odd stores run between them, and the Harkins sits in The Village, the outdoor dining plaza beside the food court.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
For the heat, mostly. From May through September an enclosed mall is one of the few public places in the Valley that works at three in the afternoon, and this is the biggest one south of Scottsdale Fashion Square, thirty-two minutes straight down the 101 from Old Town and closer than that from the resorts at the south end of the city. Our summer playbook has it as an afternoon escape, and the Scheels wheel, the Round1 lanes and the Seafood City food stalls are three things Fashion Square does not have. Our shopping note is clear that for the stores themselves Fashion Square wins; this is for the afternoon, not the wardrobe.
The practical version
Thirty-two minutes from Old Town down the 101 to Chandler Boulevard. Roughly 10 to 9 Monday through Saturday, 11 to 6 Sunday. Free parking, a shaded garage, and a Valley Metro bus transit center if you came without a car. Two or three hours.
When to go
Summer afternoons are the mall’s reason for being in this section. Weekday mornings in any season are empty and pleasant. Weekends from November through the holidays are the usual crush, with the Harkins lot full by six. Holiday weekends in Scottsdale, when Fashion Square becomes impassable, are a good time to drive down here instead.
What is actually here
- Scheels. The former Nordstrom, 250,000 square feet of sporting goods with a Ferris wheel in the atrium, an aquarium and a restaurant; it is a destination in itself for a family, and free to walk.
- Round1. Bowling, arcade and karaoke on the first floor of the old Sears; the teenager’s afternoon.
- Seafood City. The Filipino supermarket upstairs from Round1, the first in Arizona, with a fish counter and the food stalls that make it worth a visit even if you are not shopping.
- Dillard’s and Macy’s, the surviving department stores, and the 180-odd stores between them, the national mid-market.
- The Village. The outdoor plaza by the food court with the Harkins and the sit-down restaurants.
Eating
The Cheesecake Factory, P.F. Chang’s, Benihana, Firebirds, Cooper’s Hawk, The Keg, Wildflower, Hop Social Tavern, The Mexicano and a food court, all of which exist in or near Scottsdale. The Seafood City stalls are the exception. For dinner, downtown Chandler is ten minutes east on Chandler Boulevard and a different proposition entirely.
With kids
The Scheels wheel and aquarium, Round1, the Harkins and a food court make this the best indoor afternoon for a family between Scottsdale and Tucson, and an enclosed mall is the correct answer to the days our getting around note warns about, when a parked car hits 150 degrees inside. It is a mall; nobody will remember it as the highlight of the trip, and that is not what it is for.
The story
When Westcor broke ground in 2000, the Phoenix area had not built a big enclosed mall in years and the industry was already saying it never would again; the open-air lifestyle center that Westcor itself had just opened at Kierland was supposed to be the future. Chandler Fashion Center opened anyway on October 19, 2001, weeks after the September 11 attacks, with five anchors, 229 stores and the Chandler Boulevard interchange of a Loop 202 that was still being finished. Macerich bought Westcor in 2002 and has owned the mall since, alongside Scottsdale Fashion Square, Kierland Commons and, from 2007, SanTan Village, Westcor’s final project fifteen minutes east.
The next two decades were the test. Robinsons-May became Macy’s in the 2006 merger. Sears announced its closing in October 2018 and Nordstrom in May 2020, two of the five original anchors gone within two years. Macerich’s answer was to stop thinking of the boxes as department stores: Scheels, which had never been in Arizona, took the Nordstrom in 2023 and brought a Ferris wheel with it; Round1 took the Sears’s ground floor in 2025; and Seafood City, chasing the East Valley’s Filipino community, opened on the floor above in July 2026, with the mall adding driverless-car pickup zones the same summer. The result is an enclosed mall that is busier now than it was in 2015, which is a sentence few American malls can use.
The Scottsdale connection
Same owner, same developer, same decade of problems. Scottsdale Fashion Square answered its own anchor turnover with luxury, the Goldwater Boulevard wing of European houses, Nobu and Ocean 44, and a Caesars hotel beside it; Chandler Fashion Center answered with a sporting-goods theme park, an arcade and a supermarket. The two malls are the two readings of what a department store box is for in the 2020s, thirty-two minutes apart on the same freeway, and a Scottsdale local who thinks about retail should see both.
Getting there
Loop 101 south from Old Town all the way to the Chandler Boulevard exit, about twenty miles; the mall is on the northwest corner of the 101 and 202 interchange at 3111 West Chandler Boulevard. Thirty-two minutes with no traffic, forty-five from North Scottsdale, and the 101 is slow southbound on weekday afternoons. Parking is free, with a shaded garage. Chandler Fashion Center is a Valley Metro bus transit center, which makes it the one place in this section you can reach without a car, though not quickly from Scottsdale; from the mall, downtown Chandler is ten minutes east and SanTan Village fifteen minutes east on the 202.