A “coming soon” sign has gone up at 7809B NE Vancouver Plaza Drive, marking Five Below's first move into Clark County. The trend-driven discount chain is set to open inside Vancouver Plaza within the next couple of months, according to a company spokesperson, giving the retailer a foothold in a part of the county it has never reached before.
The news was first reported by WhatNow, which noted the new store sits in a central Vancouver retail corridor near Fourth Plain Boulevard, right next door to a Dollar Tree. Vancouver Plaza itself is a sprawling retail complex dating back to 1988, spanning more than 550,000 square feet with tenants including Target, Burlington, PetSmart, Barnes & Noble, Crunch Fitness, and Regal Cinemas, according to Cafaro Company marketing materials. Placing a value store known for viral merchandise trends right alongside those anchors positions Five Below to soak up heavy foot traffic already flowing through the corridor.
How Five Below Landed the Space
The Vancouver store is another example of a strategy Five Below has leaned on nationwide: backfilling space vacated by Party City, which filed for bankruptcy. At Party City's bankruptcy lease auction in February 2025, Five Below and Virginia-based Dollar Tree emerged as the top two corporate bidders, according to CoStar, with Five Below securing 44 store leases and Dollar Tree taking 148, out of roughly 250 successful bids on nearly 700 leases put up for auction. More than 400 of those leases received no bids at all.
Five Below paid $2 million upfront to the bankruptcy estate plus $70,000 for each lease it acquired to take over designation rights for the former Party City spaces, per a March 2026 report from Repurposed and Redeveloped Commercial Real Estate. The same outlet's analysis noted that the U.S. retail vacancy rate stood at a low 4.1% at the time of the auction, a scarcity that pushed value discounters to aggressively bid on pre-built, ready-to-occupy retail space rather than build from scratch.
Part of a Bigger Pacific Northwest Push
Vancouver will not be Five Below's first Pacific Northwest location. The chain made its full regional debut on November 7, 2025, opening eight stores across Washington and Oregon on the same day, according to Retail TouchPoints. Seven of those were Washington locations — Puyallup, Federal Way, Everett, Spokane Valley, Union Gap, Richland, and Lynnwood — alongside a Beaverton, Oregon store at Cascade Plaza. All eight were backfilled former Party City locations.
Five Below sells trend-focused merchandise priced mostly between one and five dollars, spanning novelty toys, tech accessories, beauty items, and snacks. According to The Columbian, the chain now operates more than 1,850 locations across 44 states after opening more than 150 new stores during its last fiscal year — a pace that reflects a broader national growth plan tracked by Placer.ai, which put the company at 1,921 stores across 46 states by January 2026 as it works toward a long-term goal of more than 3,500 U.S. locations.
A Chain Riding Viral Momentum
The Vancouver opening lands as Five Below is in the middle of a broader operational shakeup. In June 2026, CEO Winnie Park announced the chain was eliminating its distinct Five Beyond back-of-store sections — introduced in 2021 for items priced above $5 — and interspersing those higher-priced products throughout standard aisles, as reported by Retail Dive. The same report tied the move to strong financials, with Five Below recording nearly $1.3 billion in net sales in the first quarter of 2026, a 32.5% year-over-year increase fueled by a 22.7% jump in comparable store sales tied to viral items like squishy toys and trading cards.
Much of that momentum has come from Five Below's marketing pivot toward creator content and social media trends aimed at Gen Alpha, Gen Z, and millennial parents, a shift Quartz reported helped drive a 25.9% year-over-year surge in chainwide visits in early 2026. The chain has also broadened how customers can shop without visiting a store in person: in June 2025, Five Below partnered with Uber Eats to offer same-day delivery from more than 1,500 locations nationwide, according to a press release from Uber's investor relations site.
For now, Clark County shoppers have only the coming-soon signage at Vancouver Plaza to go on. A company spokesperson has said the store will open within the next couple of months, but an exact date has not been announced, nor have details on local hiring. It also remains to be seen whether Five Below will pursue additional store sites elsewhere in Clark County.
