Jonathan C.
3/5
The mall and my memories of the park are fading, so I want to write them down before they're gone.
Growing up in Fremont in the early 2000s, this was the mall to be at. It was somewhat dead at the corner with the Big 5 sporting goods, but the rest of the mall was alive.
- There was a card game vendor right outside the entrance of the Macys in the middle of the mall. Parents (like mine) would drop their kids off there while they went shopping.
- Great Mall's Red Robin originally was in NewPark. I remember they had a claw machine with candy and toothpicks with colored frilled ends. They moved out early 2000s, but it took years. Idk why I remember this so fondly.
- The Macys had a Gameboy advance at the top floor and kids would often play on it while their parents went shopping.
- There was a Target there that closed pretty early in my childhood. It had a contraption in the middle of the escalators that ferried shopping carts up and down. The target had a demo section with usually 3 game consoles that kids could play the latest games & consoles on. I faintly remember playing Shadow the Hedgehog at some point.
- The Disney store had a completely different vibe than the rest of the mall: imagine the Disney magic with a decent hit of 90s/2000s carpet smell.
- I remember Mervyn's (?) started selling 25c candy at some point. My parents were cheap, so I had a high chance of getting something sweet whenever we went to Newpark.
- Hot Topic. Literally the post-child of a comotemporary clothing shop that represented the 90s/2000s.
- Mid 2000s a korean restaurant opened up. I remember we'd go there often to eat (I usually got terriyaki chicken). They usually had free samples out front, which was great for frugal Asian families.
- There was a toy shop on the 2nd floor around one of the edges of a mall that had a claw machine filled with toy eggs.
- Nearly every department store that peaked in the 90s/2000s was in NewPark at the mall's peak. In retrospect, this didn't scale when online shopping took over.
After a while of not going, I went back when I was back home from college (ballparking at ~2014) and it was really bad inside. The inside was completely empty (no people and closed down shops) and one claw game just had a picture of some kids who tried to steal from it.
It did recover a bit afterwards. Two shop spaces were occupied by a collectables shop, which wasn't too bad (I ended up rebuying Jak and Daxter from there). They also opened space on the outside for restaurants to rent up, which brought a good amount of traffic. Yugo Ramen (which as of 2025/02/02 is still around) is a go-to for my family and I'm really glad it's not seeing a similar downwards trajectory as the core mall. Jack's (also still open) still gets consistent traffic. A John's Incredible Pizza opened up in early 2010s as well which drew in a consistent crowd of families with its arcade/amusement park hybrid and a half-decent pizza buffet (it had icee on tap).
Unfortunately, the recovery didn't stick: many of those shops closed down after a few years. In this round of shops closing, the Gamestop (had been around for as long as I could remember) also closed around the Pandemic (or right after)
After this, I doubt there'll be another recovery. Most shop spaces in the mall are empty and Costco swallowed up a huge chunk of space. Costco (for good reason) didn't even bother directly connecting the mall to itself. Before that, they tried the strategy of putting a gym in the mall (24 hour fitness). It's still alive (as of 2025/02/02), but I doubt it's contributing that much traffic.
The mall is a victim of the shift to online shopping & the lack of good transit. In the east Asian countries I've been to (Japan, Taiwan, Singapore), there are so many small/medium sized shopping malls thriving. I wish NewPark mall could come back to its glory, but unfortunately I don't think it's going to ever happen. I would just plow down the entire mall and turn it into mixed use housing.
So long (not dead yet but likely will in 5 years) and thnks fr th mmrs.
