New Forever 21 store to open Sat. at San Bernardino mall

By Andrew Edwards
Staff Writer

SAN BERNARDINO -- The scheduled opening of a new Forever 21 store will enable Inland Center Mall to fill a major vacancy before the start of the holiday shopping season.

The new Forever 21 store is scheduled to hold a grand opening Saturday. The 94,000 square foot store is 20 times larger than the clothing retailer's previous store at Inland Center.

"The timing is ideal," mall property manager Arun Parmar said.

The new store is scheduled to be the mall's third anchor store, joining Sears and Macy's. Inland Center's fourth anchor store space, formerly occupied by Gottschalks prior to that chain's liquidation, is unoccupied.

The former Gottschalks space, like many other retail vacancies, was the temporary home of a Halloween store in October.

"We're really just evaluating the best fir for the shopping center and the community," Parmar said.

The new Forever 21 store is slated to open in space that became vacant as a result of Federated Department Stores' 2005 purchase of May Department Stores. The store's impending arrival is the newest development in a nearly five-year shuffling of anchor tenants at the mall.
Prior to the department store chains' merger, Inland Center and several other U.S. malls were home to both Macy's and Robinsons's-May department stores.

Federated chose to phase out the Robinson's-May brand. The Robinsons-May store at Inland Center closed in March 2006 and the mall's Macy's moved into its former competitor's spot.
Inland Center announced in early 2008 that a Mervyn's would occupy the previous Macy's location, but Mervyn's vanished from the retail map later that year.

Forever 21 is filling the gaps left by vanishing department stores. The chain has replaced Mervyn's at the Mall of Victor Valley in the High Desert and other locations.