16 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY OCTOBER 30-NOVEMBER 5, 2025 www.montereycountynow.com Heritage Lost The story of a failed shopping mall on Monterey’s waterfront held promise in the past, and holds potential in the future. By David Schmalz Heritage Harbor was the talk of the town when it was being built in 1978, the last remaining puzzle piece of the City of Monterey’s redevelopment of its waterfront through urban renewal, which finally got sign-off from the feds in 1962. It’s a stone’s throw from where a party led by Sebastián Vizcaino in 1602, and then Junipero Serra in 1770, held a mass under the canopy of an oak. The idea for Heritage Harbor was for a themed shopping mall—local history being the theme—and it was a failure before it was even finished, its developer bankrupted. Some believe Heritage Harbor was cursed. But its failure has a much simpler explanation: It was a bad idea, poorly executed, that seemed destined to fail even if everything had gone right. That’s because, despite being in a central location and right on the water, it’s hiding in plain sight. You can drive by Monterey’s waterfront going to and from New Monterey and never see it—it’s overhead in the tunnel—and people walking or riding by on the Rec Trail might not notice the unassuming office buildings, windows tinted out, set back off the trail behind a row of cypress trees. How did that happen? Because over 60 years ago, when the leaders of Monterey decided to clean up the waterfront, improve traffic and remake part of downtown—all while condemning people’s homes and businesses—they were pretty much just making it up on the fly. As America entered its post-World War II transformation, the federal Housing Act of 1949 sought to The struggle to build Heritage Harbor, a history-themed shopping mall near the Wharf, was a regular story in the news in the mid-1970s.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjAzNjQ1NQ==