Lakewood Towne Center
shopping center on Lakewood, Washington
Lakewood Towne Center is a shopping center located in Lakewood, Washington, a suburb of Tacoma. Lakewood Towne Center was created when MBK Northwest bought and demolished the enclosed portion of the failing Lakewood Mall in 2001, and turned the site into an open air destination by creating four distinct components, including a civic center with a city hall as its centerpiece, a power center, entertainment center, and a neighborhood center. Lakewood Mall itself had been a replacement for the outdoor Villa Plaza Shopping Center.
Villa Plaza
Villa Plaza Shopping Center opened in 1957 on the site of the former Roman Catholic girls’ school, Visitation Villa. Visitation Villa was open from 1923 to 1954. On May 3, 1958, former boxing heavyweight champions Joe Louis and Max Baer visited and signed autographs before being flown by helicopter to the B & I Circus Store in Tacoma.
Lakewood Mall
In 1985 developer Basil Vyzis acquired Villa Plaza and developed the enclosed Lakewood Mall which opened in 1989 on the site of the former Villa Plaza. Throughout the short life of the mall it suffered from poor reputation, stores that were never occupied, and the closings of major anchor tenants. Vyzis died in 1996.
Lakewood Towne Center
In 2001 Lakewood Mall was acquired from ATC Realty Sixteen Inc.
“Lakewood Towne Center” enters the record as shopping center on Lakewood, Washington. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Lakewood, Towne and Center can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6479458. Authority coordinates are 47.163, -122.516. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2001, 1957, 1923 and 1954.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lakewood Towne Center” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.