California's Once-Thriving Shopping Mall Found New Life As The Headquarters For One Of Google's Companies

Located in Mountain View, California, at the heart of Silicon Valley, Mayfield Mall was your run-of-the-mill neighborhood hangout with retail stores and restaurants. Opened in 1966, it was the first air-conditioned and enclosed shopping mall in Northern California, and it certainly made a memorable first impression. Past visitors still have fond memories of the place, especially during the holiday season.

The mall shut down in 1984 after only 18 years due to low sales —  a relatively short lifespan compared to the oldest indoor shopping mall in America, Southdale Shopping Center in Edina, Minnesota. The property was converted into offices shortly thereafter. In 2013, Google rented the entire 500,000-square-foot facility, and three years later, it purchased the complex for over $225 million. Today, the Mayfield office houses some technological projects organized by X (formerly known as Google X), a subsidiary of Google's parent company, Alphabet. 

Shopping malls, according to a study by Capital One, continue to be in decline. The statistics project that in the next decade, 87% of large shopping malls may close. You may be wondering what can be done with all that space, and as it turns out, ambitious tech companies have an abundance of ideas. Corporate campuses define the Silicon Valley landscape, and Google's Googleplex, the company's largest headquarters, also located in Mountain View, is one of the more well-known examples. 

While not officially part of the Googleplex campus today, the facility that was the Mayfield Mall now serves as a research hub for X, a company under the Google umbrella that focuses on developing innovative technologies. The company refers to its offices as "the Moonshot Factory," seeing as this is where researchers, scientists, and other industry leaders come together to work on innovative tech, which, until 2023, included the now-discontinued Google Glass. Current projects include everything from AI tools specifically designed for biology to a severe weather prediction engine.

As people's consumption habits change, shopping centers like Mayfield Mall may continue to disappear — and they are far from the only kind of multi-purpose complexes going through tough times. The U.S. may also see its number of closed amusement parks go up. Six Flags America, a major player in the niche industry, announced it would shut down two of its locations in 2025 to prioritize long-term growth, which many see as the beginning of another concerning trend.