Drive past Puente Hills Mall on Colima Road these days and the parking lot tells the story before you even get inside. Sears left years ago. Macy's closed in the first quarter of 2022. Burlington shut its doors on March 22, 2024. The 24 Hour Fitness followed in June 2025. Ross closed on January 16, 2026. As of March 2026, AMC Theatres and Round 1 Bowling & Arcade are the only anchors left standing in a mall that once had roughly 150 shops running at full capacity.
That part of the story, most Hacienda Heights residents already know. You've watched it happen store by store for a decade. What's less understood is what's replacing it, who approved that decision, and how small the group making that call actually is.
The mall that outlived its own movie
Puente Hills Mall opened in phases from February 1974 through the spring of 1975, and its most famous claim to fame has nothing to do with retail. The mall's south parking lot served as the filming location for the fictional Twin Pines Mall in the 1985 film Back to the Future, the spot where Doc Brown staged his time-travel experiments with the DeLorean. For a lot of longtime locals, that connection is part of the mall's identity as much as any store that ever operated there.
The mall sold to new ownership in August 2024. According to reporting from Investigate LA, city officials and the new owners had already begun discussing an industrial redevelopment, including potential data center users, as early as June 2024, months before that sale even closed. Plans submitted to the City of Industry in January 2026 outline a full teardown of the existing mall and its surface parking. In its place: an industrial complex with two warehouses, a potential 10-megawatt data center, and a new bus transit station, spread across roughly 75 acres.
One vote, cast by a city of fewer than 300 people
Here's the detail that changes how you read everything else. Puente Hills Mall sits in the City of Industry, a municipality that is almost entirely zoned for industrial use and, per LAist's reporting, has fewer than 300 residents casting votes in its elections. In February 2026, that city's council voted unanimously to change zoning laws to allow battery energy storage systems at sites like the former mall, clearing the legal path for the redevelopment.
At the meeting, according to ABC7, one attendee summed up the room's mood during public comment:
"I don't want noise pollution. I don't want higher water bills. I don't want higher energy bills."
City officials declined on-camera interviews with ABC7 but acknowledged that data center plans for the mall site and other locations are being discussed, even while saying battery storage remains the immediate focus. The asymmetry is the whole point: a council elected by a few hundred people is making a land-use decision that reaches Hacienda Heights, Avocado Heights, Rowland Heights, La Puente, Walnut, and Diamond Bar, none of whom get a ballot in that election.
One commenter responding to Investigate LA's coverage, writing from the unincorporated area around the mall, put the frustration in practical terms: with no town center of its own and little shopping beyond a Target and a Marshalls, the mall's decline already meant driving to Brea Mall or West Covina for anything more. Losing the site to industrial use, in that view, closes a door that was already half-shut.
It isn't just the mall
The mall is the largest single site in play, but it isn't the only one. Reporting from L.A. Taco found that the City of Industry has been advancing zoning changes for at least three separate sites tied to data centers and battery storage, all within a few miles of Hacienda Heights homes and schools: the mall itself, a parcel near Madrid Middle School, and battery storage facilities along Gale Avenue.
One of those Gale Avenue projects, Aypa Power's Marici Energy Storage System Facility, was approved by the City of Industry's planning commission on January 27, 2026. At 400,000 square feet and 400 megawatts, it's designed to expand regional grid capacity. Aypa Power is owned by Blackstone, which has drawn added scrutiny given the firm's broader investments in AI infrastructure, and residents at that January meeting raised concerns about fire risk after pointing to a well-known battery fire elsewhere in the state that released tons of nickel, cobalt, and lithium.
So the mall closure isn't an isolated retail story. It's one piece of a wider industrial rezoning wave moving through unincorporated land that borders Hacienda Heights on multiple sides at once.
Where the pushback is happening, and why the location matters
Organized opposition has a name now: the Puente Hills Community Preservation Association, which has challenged the battery facility's approval under the California Environmental Quality Act and is pursuing further legal options against the mall redevelopment. More than 100 people showed up to a March 26 council meeting at 9 a.m. after the city's own email system reportedly went down beforehand, a detail residents said isn't unusual.
The most telling protest location, though, is one Hacienda Heights residents already know well. In May 2026, organizers held a rally at Peter F. Schabarum Regional Park, literally across the street from the mall. Schabarum is a 575-acre county park with developed areas for walking, picnics, tennis, and youth camps, plus miles of hiking, biking, and horseback trails that connect to the historic Juan Bautista De Anza National Historic Trail. It's the kind of place people go on an ordinary Saturday to walk a dog or ride a horse from the park's equestrian center, not to organize against a zoning vote. This year, it's been both.
What this actually means if you live nearby
The city's economic argument, that industrial development brings revenue and jobs, is a real consideration and one City of Industry officials have leaned on before. The counterargument from neighboring residents centers on things that show up close to home: added truck traffic, noise from a bowling alley and movie theater's remaining foot traffic thinning out further, and utility infrastructure operating a few hundred feet from residential streets rather than tucked into a business park.
What's clear is that the decision-making structure here is unusual even by California standards. Hacienda Heights is unincorporated, which means there's no city hall of its own to appeal to. Concerns route through the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, not a local council, while the actual zoning authority over the mall property sits with a neighboring city most residents have never voted in and likely never will.
For now, AMC and Round 1 are still open, and the mall's slow wind-down continues on its own timeline separate from the industrial approvals working their way through hearings and, likely, litigation. Whether the Marici facility, the mall redevelopment, or the additional sites near Madrid Middle School move forward as currently proposed will depend on how the CEQA challenges play out over the coming months.
If you've watched Puente Hills Mall empty out over the years and wondered what was actually going on behind the closures, this is the answer: a sale, a set of zoning votes cast by a tiny electorate, and a community response that's still being written. It's worth keeping an eye on, whether you're the type to check the news or the type to hear about it first at the dog park.
Hacienda Heights has always been a place where people know their neighbors and pay attention to what happens down the street. If you're weighing a move here, thinking about what a property near this corridor might mean for your family, or just want to talk through what you're seeing in the neighborhood, Emma Perez is always happy to have that conversation. No pressure, just a neighbor with local knowledge and time to listen.
