What Replaced the Brea Mall Sears Wing, and How It Changed a Night Out

"Can you get us a regional mall?" That was the one question the Brea City Council put to Wayne Wedin in 1968, when he interviewed at age 28 for the city administrator job. His answer was "Absolutely!"

Wedin tells the story in his recently published book, "The Brea Dividend," written with author Lisa Woolery and sold at the Brea Museum. One detail stands out now. Homart, the Sears-owned developer that built the mall, wanted it to be "more than stores, but a destination," so the original mall had an ice skating rink where the food court sits today.

Nearly fifty years later, the space Sears left behind has gone to the same idea. This time the destination is outdoors, facing the street, and built around eating out, working out and sitting on a lawn.

The Sears Wing Was the Logical Place to Start Over

Sears was one of Brea Mall's original anchors when the mall opened in 1977. It closed in 2018. Simon's redevelopment covers 15.5 acres of the 74-acre property. The plan was to replace the empty 161,990-square-foot Sears wing, the auto center and about 7.5 acres of parking lot with retail, restaurants and housing.

When the Planning Commission approved the mixed-use designation, the plan already called for a two-story fitness center, a three-level garage, and nearly an acre of green and plaza space. By January 2024 the Sears store, the tire center and the nearby parking were gone.

That acre of green is the reason the rest of the project hangs together. Without it, the new buildings would be one more strip of storefronts facing a garage.

Sunset Green Is the Room Everything Else Opens Onto

The outdoor area is called Sunset Green. Brea columnist Terri Daxon describes it in the OC Register as a park-like space with tables and seating, play spots for kids, and shops and restaurants all around it. The earliest event on record there was a July 3 celebration of America's 250th anniversary, with free ice cream. Simon hasn't published a formal opening date. So far, Brea Mall's events page shows retail promotions, and no regular fall calendar has been posted for the green.

The layout is the real change. The rink sat inside the mall, a place to drop off kids while the parents shopped. Sunset Green is outside, ringed by restaurants that stay busy after the stores inside start winding down. The tenants that filled in around it this year make that clear.

How the Ring Filled In, in Order

The openings came in a steady sequence over spring and summer 2026:

1. The Melt and EVEREVE were already open in February, the first exterior tenants.
2. North Italia opened on April 22, 2026. It's the chain's 50th restaurant.
3. DICK'S Sporting Goods held its grand opening on Friday, April 24, 2026. The store has two floors and about 50,000 square feet.
4. Pacific Catch opened on May 6, 2026, at 1430 Brea Mall.
5. Williams-Sonoma and Pottery Barn were open in the outdoor section by early July. Williams-Sonoma is back at Brea Mall in a bigger store than its old one. The center of the store is set aside for cooking events, demos and cooking classes.
6. Life Time opened on July 9, 2026, at 1600 Brea Mall Road.
7. Din Tai Fung started reservation-only soft opening at 1401 Brea Mall on August 7 and held its grand opening on August 31.

Look at the list as a whole. A few years ago, a weeknight dinner in this corner of Brea meant a drive somewhere else. Now there's Italian, seafood, soup dumplings and a burger counter within a short walk of each other, all facing the same outdoor space.

Two of the larger tenants also lean toward activities over shopping. The Williams-Sonoma store was built with room for classes. Life Time is a club people come back to several times a week, and a restaurant row can count on that kind of steady foot traffic.

Life Time Is the Anchor Sears Used to Be

Life Time sits across Brea Mall Road from the Sunset Green shops and Nordstrom. The whole site covers nearly 123,000 square feet: an 85,000-square-foot club building and 38,000 square feet of outdoor space on three acres. The outdoor side has a leisure pool with waterslides, a six-lane lap pool, cabanas, and an outdoor dining area and bar. There are also five pickleball courts, cold plunge, steam and sauna, a LifeSpa, a LifeCafe, and a Kids Academy.

It's the seventh Life Time at a Simon center, the tenth in California and the fourth in Orange County. The company's announcement calls the club a draw for "repeat visitation." A department store pulled people in a few times a season. A club with a lap pool and pickleball courts pulls them in a few times a week, often in the early morning and evening, the hours a restaurant row needs filled.

The rink idea worked the same way. Homart wanted a reason to be at the mall that didn't depend on what was in the stores. Today the indoor version of that idea is Check n'Play, where kids get supervised activities while parents shop. The outdoor version is Life Time and the lawn across the street from it.

Still Coming to the Ring

Not everything announced in February has opened. Simon listed 16 openings for 2026 back then. As of early October, a few are still pending:

• Kalbi Social Club, an upscale Korean barbecue restaurant with tableside grilling, was announced for summer 2026. Simon still lists it as "Coming Soon," with no date, on the lower level near North Italia and Nordstrom.
• MINISO was reported on September 26 as coming to Brea Mall. That report didn't give an opening date.
• Inside the mall, N Cat is holding grand-opening events from September 16 through October 31, and its listing points visitors to the Nordstrom entrance. Caitlyn Minimalist has opened on the upper level next to M.A.C.

The OC Register's Daxon said in July to expect more places to eat and shop around Sunset Green over the following months. Kalbi is the biggest piece of that still to come.

The Last Piece Arrives in 2028

Housing was part of the plan from the start. The plan the Planning Commission approved called for 380 apartments, 38 of them set aside as affordable. The current version is AMLI Brea, under construction near the mall's south edge. It's an eight-story building with 378 luxury apartments over an 885-space parking structure, and it's expected to open in 2028.

The parking numbers matter if you drive to dinner. Of those 885 spaces, 292 are for shoppers and diners. Once the building opens, its residents will live within walking distance of the green, its restaurants and the club.

One More Reopening This Week

The changes reach past the mall itself. Brea Plaza, at Imperial Highway and the 57 Freeway, is celebrating its reopening with a "Bash on Brea Plaza" on October 8 from 4 to 6 p.m. The event starts with a Brea Chamber of Commerce ribbon-cutting and includes a scavenger hunt and giveaways from the center's 135 shops and restaurants. Daxon credits the mall with drawing more shopping centers to Brea over the years, Brea Plaza among them.

For the past few years, the old Sears corner was a fenced construction site. On a weeknight this fall, it's a lawn with tables, Pacific Catch and North Italia on one side, Din Tai Fung nearby, and Life Time's pool across Brea Mall Road.

If you own a home near the new Sunset Green district and want to know how buyers are weighing all this new dining and recreation when they look at your area, Brad Kerr and the team can walk you through it with real local numbers. Start with a Free Home Valuation.