History
The Beverly Center was originally opened in 1982 by developers A. Alfred Taubman, Sheldon Gordon & E. Phillip Lyon. (The site's former occupant was a small amusement park known as Beverly Park and Kiddyland, featuring a ferris wheel, merry-go-round, and mini roller-coaster, and a pony ride known as Ponyland.) The northeast corner of the mall, at the intersection of Beverly and La Cienega Boulevards, happens to be the center of the studio zone.
The mall's unusual shape and lack of street frontage along San Vicente Blvd is due to its location on top of the Salt Lake Oil Field. The western portion of the mall property contains a cluster of oil wells, all operated by Plains Exploration & Production, in a drilling enclosure that is active to this date.
The opening of the mall featured the debut of a multiplex movie theater initially boasting 14 screens, at that time the largest number of movie screens in any US multiplex. The multiplex was launched on July 16, 1982, with the West Coast premiere of Miramax's The Secret Policeman's Other Ball which played on three of its fourteen screens. Even though the movie theater was located in Los Angeles, the opening was newsworthy enough to warrant a full article in the New York Times. In the late 1980s, three smaller screens were removed on the main floor, so two larger auditoriums could be built on the roof. The theatre closed on June 3, 2010.
The mall contained the USA's first Hard Rock Cafe, the third installment of the restaurant chain, following those in London and Toronto. The Beverly Center was originally anchored by Bullock's and The Broadway department stores, and in 1993 Bullock's opened a separate Bullock's Men's store, before both stores were renamed Macy's in 1996. The Broadway closed its location in 1996 when it was absorbed into Macy's and its former store was reopened as a Bloomingdale's in 1997.
In 2004, Taubman Centers, the public Real Estate Investment Trust and successor to A. Alfred Taubman's shopping center interests, purchased its partners minority investments stake in the property.
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