Since it opened in 1960, Lloyd Center has been a staple of the Benson community. Whether students were shopping at Barnes & Noble or Hot Topic, stopping in for a quick bite from one of the many restaurants, or just window shopping, Lloyd was a gathering place right by Benson Polytechnic High School for over 60 years. However, Lloyd has been financially struggling in the years since the pandemic. Despite the number of shops that have moved in recently, the mall still struggles to attain profitability. Because of these long-term financial issues, the mall’s owners, Urban Renaissance Group, have decided to permanently close Lloyd Center on August 8th, 2026.
Jeffrey Shields is a junior at Benson who regularly attends Lloyd, but has strong opinions about what the future of the mall should look like. “I go to Lloyd once a week every Sunday from twelve to six PM,” he explained. “Me and some nerds play D&D there for like, six hours and then have a lunch break for like twenty minutes.”
In response to a question about the state of the mall, Shields said, “There’s not that much in [Lloyd] anymore. They already tore down one end of it to turn it into a theater, which is already starting to look better than it did when they started.” He continued, “After Ross and Forever 21 left, it was already bleeding and now it’s just a corpse.”
Lloyd Center’s owners, the Washington-based firm Urban Renaissance Group, plan to replace the 60-year old mall with a mixed-use neighborhood that connects with the surrounding transportation network. There are currently no official plans to preserve any parts of the historic mall.
Shields believes the mall should be redeveloped. “I believe they should tear down Lloyd and make apartments. […] We have a big homelessness problem in Oregon. I’m not saying the apartments they’re building are low-income or very cheap. They’re probably going to be as expensive, if not more than the current apartments in Portland. But housing is housing. And we need to get more people off the streets and in their homes.”
“I have been going to Lloyd for over 30 years, it was my childhood mall,” remarked Benson’s general lunch manager, April Mayo. “And it’s been amazing because that was where we did all of our shopping, […] and after shopping we would go to the movies, and the food court after that. They had the arcade, so it was like the best thing ever, and I would look forward to that on the weekends.”
“My kids hang out a little bit at Lloyd, they go to the ice skating rink. […] They love going to Lloyd Center, especially because they go to school here and they can just walk over there and get lunch. They used to get Cinnabon, but of course that is closed down, and so is their popcorn place. [The popcorn place] used to be super famous, and it was a staple of Lloyd Center.”
When asked for her thoughts about Lloyd’s closure, Mayo said, “In this neighborhood, it’s the only mall. If you wanna go to another mall now, you have to travel 25-30 minutes in traffic both ways. So it’s really sad to think of it shutting down.” Mayo continues, “Here in Oregon, it rains and rains and it’s cold and it’s soggy. So having something so close to home and having a place for the kids to go, I think it’s better to keep that.”
“I used to go to Lloyd a lot when it was thriving, […] but now I mainly go to Lloyd Center for Barnes & Noble,” said Cassius Bolivar-Sargent, a junior. When asked how he felt about the plans to demolish Lloyd, Cassius said, “I do love Barnes & Noble, but there are other book stores that I could go to, [and] there’s a lot of other malls that are doing way better than Lloyd Center has been doing in these past few years.”
Lloyd Center’s closure will affect many members of the Benson community in different ways. Whether students see the closure as a loss or a necessary change, the mall is scheduled to close permanently on August 8th, 2026, marking the end of a valuable indoor meeting place for students and a home for many local businesses.
