The former Nordstrom department store at Clackamas Town Center, empty since 2020, is finally getting new life — not as a single retailer, but as four separate tenants spanning fitness, family entertainment and government services. A trampoline park, an indoor children's playground, a bouldering gym and a new Oregon DMV office are all set to move into the sprawling, long-dark building at 11900 S.E. 82nd Ave., with openings staggered between this fall and 2027.
Sky Zone will take over the entire lower level of the old Nordstrom, occupying roughly 54,000 square feet, according to The Oregonian/OregonLive. The trampoline park chain was first announced as a tenant back in 2024 and originally expected to open in 2025, but a spokesperson now says construction is underway at the space with a revised opening slated for fall 2026.
Upstairs, the building will be split between two more tenants. Kids Empire, an indoor children's playground chain with more than 100 locations across the country and an existing outpost in Gresham, will occupy a third upper-level space. A company representative told the outlet the Clackamas location is tentatively planned to open in December, though that timeline could still change.
A Suburban First for a Portland Climbing Gym
The most physically ambitious addition is Movement Climbing, Yoga & Fitness, which plans to open a 31,000-square-foot bouldering gym on the ground floor. Bouldering is climbing performed without ropes over professionally padded flooring, and the space is expected to open in 2027. The Clackamas gym will mark Movement's second location in Oregon, joining its existing gym in Portland's Pearl District at 1405 N.W. 14th Ave. — a facility that, per Movement, spans 30,500 square feet with 55-foot climbing walls and 18 lead cracks. The company operates more than 30 locations nationwide, but the Clackamas project represents its first move into the Portland suburbs.
The fourth tenant carries the most public significance: the Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles plans to lease about 10,000 square feet on the ground floor, with hopes of opening by summer 2027, though the agency has not set a firm date. The new office will replace the DMV's Mall 205 location in East Portland, which closed in January 2025 because of unresolvable facility issues after serving nearly 95,000 customers in 2024, according to the Oregon Department of Transportation.
Filling a 17-Year Gap in DMV Service
The Clackamas Town Center office will mark the DMV's return to the area for the first time since 2010, when the agency closed its branch across Highway 82nd in the Clackamas Promenade shopping center amid state budget cuts. That closure left unincorporated Clackamas County and Happy Valley without a local DMV branch for 17 years, a void the 2027 opening is intended to finally close.
The mall's transit connections make it a logical fit for a state office. The Clackamas Town Center Transit Center opened in September 2009 as the southern terminus of TriMet's 15-mile MAX Green Line, averaging 11,202 daily weekday riders as of May 2025, according to Wikipedia. Hoodline has previously reported on new elevator access controls TriMet activated at the transit center's parking garage this past May, part of broader efforts to keep the station safe and accessible for visitors arriving by rail.
Why Filling the Nordstrom Box Matters Financially
The push to fill the old Nordstrom isn't just about convenience — it's tied to the mall owner's financial health. Brookfield Properties, which owns Clackamas Town Center, defaulted on $191 million in commercial mortgage-backed securities debt originated by Bank of America in 2012, KGW reported in January 2025, as major anchor leases loomed for expiration. Successfully leasing out large vacant anchor spaces to tenants like Movement, Sky Zone, Kids Empire and the DMV is considered vital to the property's long-term financial restructuring.
This isn't the first time Clackamas Town Center has had to get creative with a dead department store. After Sears closed in 2018, commercial real estate firm CBRE helped backfill part of its 146,888-square-foot footprint with a 52,061-square-foot Dick's Sporting Goods store that opened in October 2020, leaving remaining upper-level space vacant. The pattern reflects a broader shift in Oregon retail: state employment data reported by Hoodline in April showed Oregon retail jobs have fallen nearly 6% since 2019, shrinking roughly five times faster than the national retail job decline, pushing mall owners toward fitness, entertainment and government tenants to replace traditional stores.
Clackamas Town Center itself first opened in March 1981 and spans more than 1.4 million square feet of gross leasable area across two floors, making it one of the largest regional malls in Oregon, according to Wikipedia. Though the mall carries a Happy Valley mailing address, it actually sits on unincorporated Clackamas County land, a jurisdictional quirk that led to a 2012 mediation agreement between Happy Valley and Milwaukie over future annexation.
Whether the mix of fitness, kids' entertainment and government office space can generate enough foot traffic and rent revenue to stabilize the property's debt load remains an open question as more anchor leases come up for renewal in the years ahead.
