After a run that spanned most of the 20th century, Harris’ closed in 1999 with an everything-must-go sale at its flagship San Bernardino department store.
The three-story building has sat vacant for 25 years.
Now, its Spain-based owners have officially given up on finding a tenant or buyer. They are donating the 270,000-square-foot building to City Hall.
The donation was accepted at Wednesday’s City Council meeting. I was there. The building should be in the city’s hands within two weeks.
“The city’s super fortunate to be offered this building by the ownership group,” City Manager Charles Montoya told me. “We’re grateful for the opportunity.”
The building at 300 N. E St. was erected in 1927. From the street it still has a grandeur about it, even boarded up. The interior is a different story — let me come back to that — but the building, seismically strengthened in the past, is sound, Montoya said.
Its assessed value is $4 million.
The Harris family launched its first store in 1905 and expanded into adjacent buildings before opening the new headquarters on Nov. 7, 1927. Shoppers entered through doors of hammered copper into a lobby with a 32-foot ceiling.
Awaiting them was a basement, first floor, mezzanine level, second floor, third floor and roof garden.
“There was a tea room, lunch counter, beauty parlor and barber shop, a sit-down soda fountain, candies, stationery, and on the south side of the building, a grocery store called Sage’s Market,” reads a history of the building on the city website. “The southeast corner of the building had a staircase of colorful tiles, which led up to their second floor restaurant, Café Madrid.”
In 1947 the up-to-the-minute store gained the Inland Empire’s first escalator, originally dubbed a “motorstair.” Wheee!
When Central City Mall, later Carousel Mall, opened in 1972, Harris’ was incorporated into the footprint with an entrance from the enclosed center.
But San Bernardino began struggling economically. The Harris family’s third generation sold the small chain, which included stores in Redlands and Riverside, in 1981 to El Corté Inglés, a Spanish department store chain.
Harris’ merged with Gottschalks in 1998 and the chain rebranded as Harris’ Gottschalks. The Great Recession a decade later put all the remaining stores out of business.
The downtown flagship closed earlier, though, on Jan. 31, 1999.
According to the staff report to the council, the building is El Corté Inglés’ sole remaining property in the United States.
“ECI has determined that it is no longer economically viable to continue to maintain the property to mitigate future acts of vandalism and trespassing,” the report reads.
The company contacted City Hall in mid-February. That was after a deal to sell to developer Alan Stanly fell through.
Stanly owns the seven-story Enterprise Building, originally the Andreson Building, at 320 N. E St.
In an interview Wednesday, Stanly told me picking up Harris’ would have made a lot of sense because of the ties between the Harris and Andreson families and the similarities of the buildings.
“Both built in 1927. Same architect. These two buildings have always been synergistic,” Stanly said. “They would be stronger together.”
Stanly bought the Enterprise Building in 2017 for $2 million and has spent $2 million on renovations. He had a deal in place for Harris’ and had been in escrow for 15 months.
He said he had agreed to buy Harris’ for $3.5 million. Needed renovations would have cost $10 million, in part due to the damaged interior.
His plan was to restore the exterior and the first floor for retail use as the first phase, for about $3 million, then in subsequent phases turn the upper floors into live-work lofts and a boutique hotel.
“The sticking point was that it didn’t have any parking,” Stanly said. “I didn’t want a 270,000-square-foot building without any parking.”
After fruitless attempts to lease an empty lot for parking, Stanly walked away from escrow a month ago. The offer by El Corté Inglés to City Hall soon followed. Joked Stanly: “There was nobody else in their right mind to buy it other than me.”
Now, about the interior.
Harris’ was apparently mostly intact until two years ago. But when people started breaching the long-closed mall, they made their way into Harris’ too.
When I toured the dead mall in August 2022 with city officials and security, a scene of wreckage due to vandalism, the entrance from the mall to Harris’ was not fully sealed.
Stanly and his son toured Harris’ on several occasions in 2023 during escrow and saw increasing amounts of damage.
“Every time we were in there we encountered homeless people,” Stanly said.
Copper wiring was stolen, as were brass valves from the sprinkler system. The building flooded for weeks from the top floor, seeping down every floor to the basement.
Carpets are moldy. Drywall and ceiling tiles are gone. Insulation was set on fire to burn it away to expose wiring.
In Café Madrid, swivel seats were yanked out so that vandals could steal the iron rods. The seats were then politely placed upside down on the counter.
“Even the elevator doors have been stolen. Every storefront window has been broken,” Stanly marveled. “They even stole the granite off the façade.”
He described the building as “gutted, burned, flooded, moldy and asbestos-laden” and said “it’s not really a gift. It’s handing someone a gigantic liability.”
That said, Stanly admitted that city ownership might be “a better outcome” — for starters, it’s saved everyone $3.5 million — and that he remains interested in Harris’. Why?
“It’s a work of art,” Stanly said. “The bones of that building are intact. The plate of each floor is 50,000 square feet.”
Ownership will give City Hall full control of the mall site, on which demolition is mostly complete.
Montoya said future uses for Harris’ will be determined by the council.
“We’re not going to sell it,” Montoya told me. “I think to bring this back to what it was before is important to the community.”
David Allen writes Friday, Sunday and Wednesday, which is somewhat important to the community. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on Twitter.
