A Buffalo Wild Wings opened Monday inside a slice of the old Sears department store at Clackamas Town Center, filling ground-floor retail space that had sat empty since the anchor tenant shuttered its Happy Valley mall location back in 2018. The new sports bar sits around the corner from the Dick's Sporting Goods entrance and features indoor and outdoor seating, big screens, and a full bar serving up boneless wings to hungry mall-goers.
More than 100 people lined up for the grand opening, which included promotions offering free wings for a year, according to a ribbon-cutting hosted by the North Clackamas Chamber of Commerce on August 31. The chamber noted the new restaurant faces 82nd Avenue on the west side of the shopping center, giving it its own street-facing presence separate from the mall's interior corridors. As reported by OregonLive, the location closes at 1 a.m. Monday through Thursday, 2 a.m. Friday and Saturday, and midnight on Sunday.
From Sears Sprawl to Mixed-Use Buildout
The former Sears store once contained nearly 150,000 square feet of empty retail space after the department store closed in 2018. Dick's Sporting Goods revived most of that footprint in October 2020, occupying the upper retail floor, but the former Sears building retained an upstairs area and two ground-level vacant spaces that have since become available for buildouts like the new Buffalo Wild Wings, per the same OregonLive report. Buffalo Wild Wings now operates 10 restaurants in Oregon and more than 1,400 nationwide.
The Happy Valley location marks a return to the Portland area for the chain, which closed its longtime downtown Portland restaurant in 2024 after a series of failed rent payments. That downtown spot, at Southwest 4th Avenue and Morrison Street, shut down after 17 years following property damage, safety concerns, and a 50% drop in March sales that culminated in a dispute with the city over unpaid rent, according to KGW. The downtown location was described as a “haven for crime and drug use,” and the city, which owned the building, had shut down the adjacent parking garage following persistent crime complaints.
A Mall Betting Big on Entertainment and Services
The new restaurant is part of a broader shift at Clackamas Town Center, where the roughly 121,000-square-foot former Nordstrom space, empty since 2020, is being carved up for four new tenants rather than another department store. Those include two indoor children's play spaces, a bouldering gym, and an Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles office, Hoodline reported in its coverage of the Nordstrom overhaul. Openings across that former department store space are staggered between late 2026 and 2027.
That pivot toward entertainment and civic services carries financial urgency for mall owner Brookfield Properties, which defaulted on a $191 million commercial mortgage-backed securities loan on the property in late 2024. A subsequent January 2025 appraisal ordered by special servicers showed the property's value had dropped by more than $100 million, according to Morningstar DBRS. Brookfield originally acquired the mall in 2018 through its purchase of GGP Inc., and filling vacant anchor space with tenants like Buffalo Wild Wings, Sky Zone, and Movement Climbing has become central to the property's long-term debt restructuring.
Suburban Growth Fuels the Shift
Happy Valley's population has expanded by more than 27% between 2020 and 2026, reaching an estimated 30,129 residents with a median household income of $122,151, roughly 50% above the Oregon statewide average, per World Population Review data. That growth helps explain why national chains are increasingly betting on suburban Happy Valley rather than downtown Portland's urban core.
Dave & Buster's, also located at Clackamas Town Center, holds the distinction of being the only location of its kind in Oregon and stays open until midnight most weekdays and 1 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Clackamas Town Center itself opened in 1981 and spans more than 1.4 million square feet of gross leasable area, making it one of the largest enclosed malls in the state, and it also serves as the southern terminus of TriMet's MAX Green Line, connecting the Happy Valley-area complex directly to downtown Portland.
Buffalo Wild Wings' parent company, Inspire Brands, which also owns Arby's, Dunkin', and Jimmy John's, filed confidentially for an initial public offering in May 2026 while managing a global franchise network of more than 33,000 locations. Readers with news tips about the Clackamas Town Center redevelopment can email Veronica Nocera, who authored the original OregonLive report, at [email protected].
