Paseo Nuevo

This article is about the shopping center in Santa Barbara, California. For the street in Mexico City formerly called Paseo Nuevo, see Avenida Bucareli.

Paseo Nuevo: cinemas on the right

Looking southwest along Cañón Perdido Street past the former Nordstrom

Looking southeast from Cañón Perdido Street past the former Nordstrom with the length of the mall behind it

"North Court" plaza at Paseo Nuevo

Paseo Nuevo is a 458,000-square-foot (42,500 m²) open-air shopping center spanning two city blocks of downtown Santa Barbara, California. It is integrated into the street grid on and around lower State Street via pedestrian promenades positioned mid-block at right angles to the surrounding streets, as are the traditional alleyways of the city's downtown. It is constructed in Spanish Colonial Revival architectural style.

In June 2026 the Santa Barbara City Council approved a transaction allowing local company, Yardi Systems, to acquire Paseo Nuevo and redevelop the former Macy's building at the mall's southern end as a corporate office for roughly 600 Yardi employees. In a separate transaction, the former Nordstrom building at the northern end of the mall is planned to be converted into around 100 units of housing. Taken together, this redesign has been hailed locally, after the prior closures of Macy's and Nordstrom left the shopping center relatively underutilized for several years.

History

Paseo Nuevo was built by the Santa Barbara City Redevelopment Agency, utilizing John Field as architect, and opened in 1990. The shopping center initially featured two primary anchor tenants, a Nordstrom department store and a 140,000-square-foot (13,000 m²) Broadway department store each at opposite ends of the mall.

In 1996 the Broadway was converted to a Macy's, which subsequently closed in 2017. The Nordstrom closed in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.