What was Camelview Plaza?
In 1977 Scottsdale Fashion Square got a rival across the street. Camelview Plaza was a fully enclosed mall built just west of Fashion Square, on the far side of North 70th Street, by a Chicago businessman, John F. Cuneo, and designed by the Chicago firm Belli & Belli. It brought two department stores from out of state: Bullock’s, from Los Angeles, and Sakowitz, the Houston specialty store. On a parcel of its own stood the Harkins Camelview, the art-house theater that had opened in 1973 and took the mall’s name.
For several years the two malls fought for shoppers and tenants, with a shuttle running between them. After Westcor bought Fashion Square in 1982, the owners agreed to join them: a two-story bridge of shops over 70th Street, which was sunk below grade, widened and renamed Goldwater Boulevard. The work was done by 1991.
In 1996 Westcor bought Camelview Plaza too and put the whole complex under the Fashion Square name. Its Sakowitz had become Neiman Marcus in 1992, and its Bullock’s was rebuilt as an expanded Dillard’s by 1998. Camelview Plaza is the west end of the mall today.
Two malls, one block
The rivalry. Fashion Square had opened in 1961 as an open-air center on the corner of Scottsdale and Camelback, anchored by Goldwater’s. Camelview Plaza went up a block west in 1977, enclosed and air-conditioned from the start. Wikipedia’s history of the mall says the two “competed for shoppers and tenants” for several years.
The bridge. The truce came with new ownership. After Westcor bought Fashion Square in 1982, its owners and Camelview Plaza’s agreed to build a two-story retail bridge across 70th Street, replacing the shuttle. The street was lowered beneath it, widened to four lanes and renamed Goldwater Boulevard. Both malls were gutted and renovated, Fashion Square added a food court with a seven-screen Harkins, and the redevelopment was finished in 1991. Neiman Marcus took over the Sakowitz store the next year.
The merger. Bullock’s closed in 1996, and the same year Westcor bought Camelview Plaza and renamed the whole 1.8-million-square-foot complex Scottsdale Fashion Square. The expansion that followed, finished in 1998, is the one people remember: Arizona’s first Nordstrom, in a new wing reached by a bridge over Camelback Road, and a Dillard’s moved into the old Bullock’s building and expanded to 365,000 square feet, the largest store in the chain.
The theater. The Camelview stayed where it was, in its own building by Highland Avenue, until December 2015, when Harkins replaced it with a 14-screen theater at Fashion Square. Its own page has that story.
The sources, and a correction
Main sources: Wikipedia’s Scottsdale Fashion Square article, which draws on the mall’s own history and the Mall Hall of Fame; DeadMalls.com’s Camelview Plaza page; and the Harkins Camelview 5 sources for the theater.
What’s unsettled:
- The opening year. 1977 in Wikipedia; one DeadMalls contributor says 1972, which may be confusing the mall with the theater (1973) or with Fashion Square’s own 1970s expansions.
- The bridge’s date. Agreed in 1982, part of the redevelopment finished in 1991. We haven’t found the year it opened.
- The tenants. Beyond the two anchors and the theater, no tenant list we’ve found survives.
A correction. This page used to describe Camelview Plaza as an open-air center on the west side of Scottsdale Road, absorbed around 1998 when Fashion Square “bridged Camelback Road,” with the theater later moving “inside the mall.” All three were wrong. It was an enclosed mall west of 70th Street; it was linked to Fashion Square by the Goldwater Boulevard bridge and bought in 1996; and the Camelback bridge of 1998 leads to the Nordstrom wing on the other side of the mall. The theater stayed in its own building until 2015.
Why it matters
Camelview Plaza is why Fashion Square is as big as it is. Two malls on one block, owned by different people, competed for a decade and then grew together. The bridge over Goldwater Boulevard is the seam between them, and the theater that kept the Camelview name for nearly forty years made the plaza better known than most of its stores.