El Rancho Santa Anita Shopping Center in Arcadia, California was one of the first planned shopping centers in suburban Los Angeles, opened in 1948-1950, and later anchored by a large May Company department store. The May Company building is now empty, but the center remains anchored by a supermarket.
In April 1940, Santa Anita Village, an early suburban housing development, petitioned the Arcadia city council for a zoning change to permit an 18-acre shopping center along Huntington Drive at Michillinda to be known as the Santa Anita Village Shopping Center.[1]
When the shopping center opened in 1948, it advertised as the El Rancho Santa Anita Shopping Center. It opened with a supermarket in 1948 but the official opening wasn't until 1950, when it also opened the first elevator in Arcadia.[2]
Competition nearby at the time included a local department store, Hinshaw's in a retail cluster along Baldwin Avenue, but the much larger Santa Anita Fashion Park was only built much later in 1974.
On October 8, 1966, the May Company opened a large 240000square feet branch here, its fourteenth store in California, designed by Victor Gruen and Associates with Spanish colonial interiors by Welton Becket and Associates.[3] [4] The store closed in the late 1980s and was bought by Vons Cos., parent company of Vons supermarkets, and converted to that company's new headquarters[5] [6] until the brand was purchased by Albertsons, and the headquarters function was moved to Albertsons' regional office in Fullerton.[7]