Pedestrian mall esplanade, shopping, dining and entertainment complex in the downtown area of Santa Monica considered a premier shopping and dining district

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Overview

The Third Street Promenade is a pedestrian mall esplanade, shopping, dining and entertainment complex in the downtown area of Santa Monica, California which originally opened as the Santa Monica Mall on November 8, 1965. It is considered a premier shopping and dining district on the Westside and draws crowds from all over the Greater Los Angeles area. It is also a popular tourist destination.

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History

Third Street has been a center of business in Santa Monica since the town's inception in the late 19th century. The Promenade's roots date back to November 8, 1965 when three blocks of Third Street were converted into a pedestrian mall. Although successful, by the late 1970s, the Santa Monica Mall (as it was then called), was in need of modernization and a redesign. A new enclosed shopping center, Santa Monica Place (1980-2007), designed by Frank Gehry was added at the Promenade's southern end. A citywide bond measure was issued and architectural firm ROMA Design Group was hired to redesign Santa Monica Mall. The renamed Third Street Promenade opened on September 16, 1989. The project was part of a larger redevelopment effort, encompassing several blocks of Downtown Santa Monica. Santa Monica Place has since been renovated into a new open-air shopping and dining venue that re-opened on August 6, 2010.

Public art

A central feature of the Third Street Promenade are the public art topiary sculptures and fountains The Dinosaurs of Santa Monica by the French team Les Lalanne. Located along three blocks of the Third Street Promenade, the dinosaur topiaries "spew" streams of water from their mouths.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "USS Iowa Museum", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0