Lewis Retail Centers Opens Inland Empire Mall

The MarketPlace at Calimesa. Image courtesy of Lewis Group of Cos.

Lewis Retail Centers has opened The MarketPlace at Calimesa, a 105,000 square-foot shopping center in Calimesa, Calif. Anchored by a Stater Bros. Market, the Inland Empire retail property also includes Starbucks and Del Taco among its tenants.  

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Randall Lewis, executive vice president of marketing at the Lewis Group of Cos., the parent company of Lewis Retail Centers, told Commercial Property Executive that the company broke ground on the project in May 2019 and tapped CSI Construction as the general contractor.

The shopping center will also be home to Cold Stone Creamery, Jack in the Box, Modern Nails, Skin Solutions Aesthetics and Supercuts. Lewis also told CPE that these remaining tenants are anticipated to be open by the end of the year. Lewis said in prepared remarks that there’s a demand for close-in grocery and casual food from the area’s growing residential population, despite the current market conditions.

”For the MarketPlace at Calimesa, we studied the site and noticed a strong housing growth in the area,” Lewis told CPE. “With no similar competition for approximately 4 miles and steady housing growth on the rise, we believed that the site and the local community would benefit from a grocery-anchored shopping center.”

Lewis also told CPE that the company approached several grocery operators before selecting Stater Bros. Market as the anchor tenant.

Building in response to residential demand

Lewis added that one of the company’s original strategies involves identifying growing residential markets with little to no retail. Following this strategy, Lewis Retail Centers also began construction on a Safeway at Damonte Ranch Town Center, a shopping center in Reno, Nev., that is expected to open in the spring of 2021. Safeway will occupy a 62,000-square-foot space and will be the third anchor for the retail property alongside Home Depot and RC Willey. Lewis Retail Centers also opened a Millennial-focused retail center in Rialto, Calif., in August 2018.

Elsewhere in California, the company is upgrading some of its other shopping center properties. In Eastvale, Calif., Lewis Retail Centers is also working on modernizing the appearance of the 850,000-square-foot Eastvale Gateway. In Vacaville, Calif., the company completed a renovation of the Regency Park Plaza by installing LED lights in the parking lot, updating the monument sign with LED panels, repainting the exterior, adding new awnings and louvers, and installing building lights on the center’s columns. The company has also added electric car charging stations to several grocery-anchored shopping centers.