Editor’s note: Brian Lutz, author of The Sledghammer – Version 2.0 blog, has agreed to share his research on the Totem Lake Mall with Kirkland Views. Brian has written this three-part article for us chronicling the mall’s past, present and possible future. 

 

The History of Totem Lake Mall

The Totem Lake Mall wasn’t always the nearly vacant shell that it is today. When the lower mall first opened in May of 1973, it was almost completely occupied with a diverse collection of shops and services. The same was true of the upper mall, which opened for business roughly a year later in 1974. When Totem Lake Center (as it was called at the time) first opened to the public, the East Side Journal (Kirkland’s weekly newspaper at the time, which later merged with the Bellevue American to form the Daily Journal-American) provided extensive coverage of the mall’s opening and the businesses that were found there, giving us a rather good (if incomplete) look at the mall in its early days. When the mall was first opened, the decor was patterned after an Indian longhouse, with totem poles throughout. Large skylights in the ceiling highlighted exposed structural timbers rising from hardwood floors. During the center’s early years, an annual event known as Indian Festival days took place, highlighting the mall’s theme. A giant totem pole with large wings served as the freeway sign in front of the mall (portions of which remain under the current Totem Lake Mall sign, which exceeds current Kirkland sign height regulations but was grandfathered in.)

At this time, most of the mall’s anchors were stores from the Pay ‘n Save family of companies. In addition to the eponymous drugstore chain, Pay ‘n Save also owned:

• Ernst Hardware and Malmo Nursery – originally occupied the space where the Ross, Famous Footwear and Car Toys stores are found now;
• Lamonts – anchored the enclosed mall, although construction of this store would not be completed until several months after the mall opened;
• Schucks Auto – the only Pay ‘n Save brand which still exists today; and
• Sportswest – found in the upper mall, they were bought by Big 5 Sporting Goods in 1988, and a Big 5 store remains in operation at Totem Lake to this day

At the time the lower mall opened, there was a total of 35 stores in the lower mall, many of which were locally owned and operated.

Although it may seem strange to an observer today, there was in fact an actual enclosed mall in the upper portion of the property, with space for 26 different stores. Of these stores, the only stores to remain in operation today are the Sportswest store (now Big 5) and Denny’s Pet World, both of which opened along with the lower mall in 1973, although Denny’s Pet World originally occupied a much smaller than their current location. Other occupants of the upper mall included a series of tire shops, a Pizza Haven (which later became Pietro’s Pizza), the Totem Book Shop, an indoor miniature golf course (which I believe occupied a portion of the building where Trader Joe’s is located now) and even waterslides known as the Turbo Tubes during the 1980s. If you visit the Guitar Center in the upper mall, you can still see some of the remaining vestiges of the old mall in the haphazard layout of the store, with walls seemingly placed at random throughout.

Beyond the first couple of years, I have not yet been able to find out much information on the history of the malls yet. Totem Lake’s heydays were short lived, as competition from other nearby malls (including the newly constructed Alderwood Mall in 1979 and the newly reconstructed mall at Bellevue Square in the early 80s) stole its customers with higher end stores and more choices. At some point in the early Eighties the lower mall was remodeled, putting up a false ceiling to cover up the exposed timbers and replacing the original longhouse theme with generic mall decor. A minor remodel also happened sometime during the Nineties which replaced the floor again and brought the mall to its current state. The mall’s Ernst store closed down in 1996 when the company went under, and the space sat vacant for a couple of years before the current occupants moved in. Rite Aid moved out of the mall and into a nearby freestanding store in 2006, and CompUSA (which originally opened as a Computer City store) closed down in early 2007 along with all of the other CompUSA locations in Western Washington (the company was liquidated a year later). Other somewhat recent occupants of the lower mall included a Radio Shack store which eventually moved across the street, a party supply store known as Grab Bag, a consignment antique shop, a short-lived fly-by-night printer ink refiller and a Halloween supply store in the Gottschalks space.

There is still a lot of information that I have not filled in on the history of Totem Lake. Over on my own Blog, you can see some of the information that I have been able to find at this post. In addition to my research, there are also a number of comments that have been added by readers that have helped to (slowly) fill in some of the blanks on the history of this property, and provide some idea of what this mall might have been like in better days. I happen to be a relatively recent transplant to this area, having lived here for only about fourteen years now, so by the time I was here much of the decline of the Totem Lake Malls had already happened. All I have been able to find so far is what’s on the microfilmed East Side Journal archives, and the quality of those photos leaves plenty to be desired.

Editor’s note: For more history on shopping malls, check out Mall Hall of Fame blog. The site includes some fantastic old photos of local malls such as Bellevue Square, Northgate, Southcenter and Tacoma Mall. They’ll bring back a few memories for you. Personally, I have many fond memories of the old Frederick and Nelson in Bellevue Square and eating lunch with my family at the Crabtree Restaurant.

See: The Colorful Past and Unwritten Future of Kirkland’s Totem Lake Mall – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

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