The Hawthorne Plaza mall was abandoned 25 years ago. Can the city force property owners to act?

The long-vacant Hawthorne Plaza mall has been a problem in the South Bay for years, according to city authorities, residents and business owners near the sprawling property.

Instead of attracting shoppers, the mall in the city’s downtown is a magnet for trespassers, accumulated trash and occasional fires.

And now the city is forcing developers to do something about it.

This summer, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ordered owners of the 900,000-square-foot property to secure the site and step up safety measures while devising a plan to either turn it into something the community can use or demolish it.

The owner must break ground by late August 2026.

“With our luck, they'll build high-end condos, but they need to put units in there that people can afford,” said Ronald Robinson, an airline employee who used to live near the shuttered mall.

The latest turn in the story of Hawthorne Plaza highlights what’s happening in L.A. County and across the country as shopping centers that were once hives of commerce and social connection are abandoned and left to decay.

Often these properties turn into eyesores that can negatively affect the health, safety and property values of their neighborhoods.

“The mall property takes up several blocks of the city’s civic center and has a tremendous negative economic impact on a small city,” Hawthorne City Attorney Robert Kim told LAist, adding that some residents who live nearby say they fear going out at night.

West Hollywood-based property development firm The Charles Company owns the Hawthorne mall property. The firm also owns several abandoned buildings in North Hollywood's Valley Plaza shopping center, which L.A. officials recently declared a public nuisance, giving the city authority to demolish the dilapidated structures.

In 2021, the city of Hawthorne filed a lawsuit against the company, arguing it violated zoning laws by illegally renting out parking spaces to Tesla and Amazon, and failed to fix dozens of code violations, including health and safety hazards like missing floors, mold and human waste.

In legal filings, the mall owners denied most of the city's allegations and argued that Tesla and Amazon were legitimate tenants rather than illegal renters. The Charles Company blamed “unauthorized trespassers” for damage and safety issues.

A faded Hawthorne Plaza parking sign along Hawthorne Boulevard

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Aaron Schrank

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LAist

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Court injunction

After a hearing this summer, Superior Court Judge Steve Cochran issued an injunction requiring the owners to secure the Hawthorne mall site and plan for next steps.

Work on the site has to begin by Aug. 31, 2026.

The judge ordered The Charles Company to put more fencing around the mall and to maintain on-site security and daily cleaning crews. Cochran also said the company has to test the buildings for asbestos.

“Aside from the injunction and court action, the city is limited in its authority on this particular site, because the property is privately owned,” Kim, the city attorney, said. “And historically, the owners have not worked with us to find solutions for the unhoused frequenting their site.”

In July, the company told the court it was working on several concepts for the Hawthorne Mall, including one that would make it into a modern retail center.

Property manager Yuri Martinez told LAist the company is “deeply committed to revitalizing underperforming sites” and looking forward to sharing its vision.

If the 2026 deadline passes without substantial progress at Hawthorne Plaza, the city can request a court-appointed receiver to take control of the property.

Status review hearings are scheduled for the judge to monitor The Charles Company’s compliance with the order. The firm’s co-founder, Arman Gabaee, is serving a four-year federal prison sentence for bribing an L.A. County real estate official between 2010 and 2017.

The scheme included attempting to secure a $45 million county lease for the Hawthorne Mall property itself, according to court documents.

According to prison records, Gabaee is scheduled to be released from a halfway house next month.

The parking garage at the former Hawthorne Plaza has been fenced off with barbed wire to keep out trespassers.

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Aaron Schrank

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LAist

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A once-popular mall

The Hawthorne Plaza mall opened in 1977 on what was previously a blighted commercial lot. In its heyday, the two-story enclosed shopping center was home to 130 retail stores.

“This was a shopping mecca for minorities,” said Robinson, who lived in the neighborhood in the 1980s. “This was one of the few malls that Latinos and Blacks could go to and feel comfortable they had some place to shop.”

Robinson, a 47-year employee at American Airlines, regularly visits his union office for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, right across the street from the now-empty mall.

When LAist visited the site recently, the 35-acre property was mostly desolate and boarded up. The sprawling parking garage is covered in barbed wire and large signs warning against trash dumping.

But there seemed to be little evidence of trespassing or other nuisance activity in and around the building — just an abandoned shopping cart and a few graffiti tags.

Several people hanging out near the train tracks told a reporter that the newly-constructed fencing near a portion of the mall deters most trespassers. That fencing went up within the past month, Hawthorne officials confirmed.

Nearby business owners said the dormant property had long cast its shadow on the block.

“It’s been like that for more than 20 years,” he said Juan Hernandez has owned a boots and western wear shop on the opposite side of Hawthorne Boulevard, called Botas Huentitan, for the past 18 years. “They really need to do something about it.”

His business survives mostly by selling leather goods to tourists staying at hotels near LAX, Hernandez said.

The street is often empty, aside from when one of the nearby schools or the city jail lets out.

“It’s really sad to have it like that,” he said of the mall. “We need to bring more business.”

The shopping center used to be a point of pride for the community, said Pamela Fees, vice president of the Hawthorne Historical Society.

“Back when that mall was built, community members felt like they wanted to spend their tax dollars in Hawthorne,” she said.

But circumstances changed for Hawthorne Plaza when more shopping centers emerged in the region as competitors. It also suffered from the downturn in the area’s aerospace industry and was damaged during the 1992 riots, according to news reports.

By the mid-1990s, nearly 1-in-4 storefronts at the mall were vacant. JCPenney left in 1998 and the mall closed altogether the next year.

A faded Montgomery Ward department store sign at Hawthorne Plaza. The department store shuttered in 1997.

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Aaron Schrank

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LAist

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Broken promises

The Charles Company bought the property in 2001 for $7 million, according to property records.

Since then, several redevelopment proposals for Hawthorne Plaza have come and gone, Hawthorne officials said. The company proposed a mixed-use housing project there in 2008, but that plan fell apart after the owners changed their minds, city officials said.

“There had been numerous proposals from the owner that were accepted by the city but never materialized,” Kim said.

In late 2016, the firm filed new development plans with the city to begin work on a $500 million overhaul. The City Council approved them, but nothing happened. So in 2018, the city canceled the plans.

The Charles Company then leased the building to L.A. County, as part of the bribery scheme for which Gabaee was convicted.

Over the years, the mall’s interior was used as a filming location. In the 2002 film Minority Report, Hawthorne Plaza still looked onscreen like a functioning shopping center. But it’s been used for its dilapidated apocalyptic look in 2014’s Gone Girl, 2020’s Tenet and a host of music videos by artists, including Beyonce and Taylor Swift.

Skateboarders, graffiti taggers, photographers and others seeking a glimpse of a decaying mall have trespassed inside, some documenting the mall’s interior and posting videos on YouTube and social media platforms.

An unhoused person's belongings in a shopping cart outside of the Hawthorne Plaza parking garage.

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Aaron Schrank

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LAist

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Regional enforcement crisis

Throughout L.A. County, local governments are struggling to hold absentee landlords responsible for dilapidated nuisance properties. In Los Angeles, city leaders are pushing to streamline the city’s convoluted process they say involves too many departments.

“Our nuisance abatement process is among the most confusing and contradictory processes we have in the city,” council President Marqueece Harris Dawson said.

Early last year, the L.A. City Council asked the L.A. City Attorney’s Office to produce a report on the administration, enforcement, governance, implementation and oversight of nuisance abatement proceedings in city’s legal codes.

The City Attorney’s Office did not produce that analysis. So, last Wednesday, several council members introduced a motion demanding it be released within a week.

The city attorney did not meet that deadline, and the office did not respond to LAist’s requests for comment on the public nuisance report.

L.A. Councilmember Adrin Nazarian said the city’s current process involves too many people in too many offices and takes too much time.

“We need to simplify the process so the City can take action when these properties become a problem, not months or years later,” Nazarian said.

Nazarian led a recent move to declare abandoned Valley Plaza buildings in North Hollywood a public nuisance. The property is located in his council district.

“If we have to get a court injunction, we will, but we’ve chosen the route we think will get us the quickest results,” he said. “Different enforcement approaches work better in different situations.”

Earlier this year, a California state lawmaker introduced a bill that would place a vacancy tax on landlords who let commercial buildings sit empty for more than six months a year. Business and landlord groups have universally opposed the legislation.

In Hawthorne, the director of the historical society said the organization gives museum tours twice a week, and most guests ask about the future of the Hawthorne Mall.

“Many people either remember the mall or they’ll see it,” Fees said. “Either way, they ask what the status is and they’re all anxious to see something happen. We’re not sure if this will make something happen or not.”