Paseo Nuevo

This article is about the shopping center in Santa Barbara, California. For the street in Mexico City formerly called Paseo Nuevo, see Avenida Bucareli.

34.419°N 119.7005°W / 34.419; -119.7005 Paseo Nuevo is an 458,000-square-foot (42,500 m²)^[1] open-air shopping center in downtown Santa Barbara, California. It is integrated into the street grid on and around lower State Street, both in terms of its Spanish Colonial Revival architecture, but also in that its pedestrian promenades, are similarly positioned mid-block at right angles to the surrounding streets, as are the traditional alleyways of the city's downtown.

Paseo Nuevo: cinemas on the right

Looking southwest along Cañón Perdido Street past the former Nordstrom

Looking southeast from Cañón Perdido Street past the former Nordstrom with the length of the mall behind it

"North Court" plaza at Paseo Nuevo

The center opened in 1990, was anchored by Nordstrom and a 140,000-square-foot (13,000 m²) Broadway department store.^[2] The mall was built by the Santa Barbara City Redevelopment Agency, and John Field was the architect.^[3]

The Broadway was converted to Macy's, which closed in 2017. That building is, as of mid-2020, still empty, and is now referred to as the Ortega Building. The Nordstrom closed in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Plans were put forward in 2019 for the center's renovation and repositioning.^[1] With the closing of Nordstrom, plans were presented to convert that space to housing and a hotel.^[4][5][6]