The two biggest empty spaces at Clackamas Town Center are finally filling up, and almost none of the new tenants sell clothes. The old Nordstrom will hold a trampoline park, an indoor playground, a bouldering gym, and an Oregon DMV office. Part of the old Sears reopened this month as a sports bar that stays open until 2 a.m. on weekends.
Taken together, the mall on SE 82nd Avenue is being rebuilt around activities, errands, and late nights. For Happy Valley residents, that changes when you would go and why. The move is gradual. Only one of these spaces is open today, and the rest arrive in stages through 2027.
The Sears building, eight years later
Sears closed its Happy Valley mall store in 2018. It left behind nearly 150,000 square feet of retail space. Dick's Sporting Goods took most of it in 2020, but the upstairs and two ground-level spaces stayed empty.
Buffalo Wild Wings opened in one of those ground-level spaces on Monday, Aug. 31. It sits around the corner from the Dick's entrance and has indoor and outdoor seating. The hours stand out more than the menu:
- Monday through Thursday, until 1 a.m.
- Friday and Saturday, until 2 a.m.
- Sunday, until midnight
That puts it next to Dave & Buster's, the mall's other late spot. Dave & Buster's is open until midnight most weekdays and 1 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, and it is the only location in Oregon. The mall now has two places open well after the stores close. Both are built around games, screens, and groups.
The rest of the Sears building is still waiting. As of The Oregonian's Sept. 4 report, the upstairs and the last ground-level space were still empty.
The Nordstrom building, floor by floor
The old Nordstrom is the bigger change. Four tenants will split the building, and each serves a different kind of visit.
| Space | Tenant | What it is | Current opening target |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entire lower level, about 54,000 sq ft | Sky Zone | Indoor trampoline park | Early October 2026 |
| Upper level | Kids Empire | Indoor children's playground | Tentatively December 2026 |
| Ground floor | Movement Climbing, Yoga & Fitness | Bouldering gym with yoga and fitness classes | 2027 |
| Ground floor, about 10,000 sq ft | Oregon DMV | Field office | Hoped for by summer 2027 |
Read down the table and the building's day comes into focus. The kids' spaces sit on the lower and upper levels. The fitness and errand uses share the ground floor. Families with young children, climbers after work, and anyone renewing a license will all use the same building for very different reasons.
Sky Zone, two years in the making
Sky Zone was announced for this space in 2024. At the time, the company expected to open in 2025. In mid-August, a Sky Zone spokesperson told The Oregonian that construction was still underway and the park was slated for fall 2026.
Sky Zone's own Happy Valley page now narrows that to early October 2026. It offers a mailing-list signup but no public ticket or membership link yet. With about a week left in September, the park could be only days or weeks away. After one missed timeline, though, the safest plan is to wait for a confirmed date before you book a birthday party.
Kids Empire and a second play option by winter
Kids Empire is an indoor children's playground chain with more than 100 locations in the U.S., including one in Gresham. A company representative told The Oregonian the Clackamas location is tentatively planned to open by December and that the timeline could change.
If both openings hold, Happy Valley families will have two indoor play spaces under one roof by the start of winter. That matters in a region where outdoor playground time shrinks from November to March.
Movement brings a climbing gym south of the Pearl
Movement runs more than 30 gyms nationwide. Its only Oregon location today is in Portland's Pearl District at 1405 NW 14th Ave. The Clackamas gym will be its second in the state. It will focus on bouldering, a style of climbing done without ropes over padded flooring, and will also offer yoga and other fitness programs. The company expects to open in 2027.
For climbers in Happy Valley, this means they won't have to cross the river and hunt for parking in Northwest Portland on a weeknight. Movement is also the first tenant in either building aimed at regular adult visits. A gym membership brings people back several times a week, which a trampoline park or a sports bar usually doesn't.
The DMV comes back to Clackamas after 17 years
The least glamorous tenant may end up bringing the most regular traffic. The Oregon DMV plans to lease about 10,000 square feet on the ground floor. The office will replace the DMV's Mall 205 location, which closed in January 2025 over what the agency called "unresolvable facility issues."
There hasn't been a DMV office in the Clackamas area since 2010, when the agency closed its location at the Clackamas Promenade shopping center across the street. An Oregon Department of Transportation spokesperson said no opening date has been set, but the DMV hopes to be running by summer 2027.
A DMV office draws steady weekday visits from people who weren't planning to go to the mall at all. Some of them will stay for lunch.
The smaller openings that fit the same pattern
The inline shops point the same way, toward lower-cost stops that people come back to. Miss A, a beauty and accessories retailer that prices much of its stock at one dollar, is listed as coming soon to Clackamas Town Center. It would be the company's first confirmed store in Oregon. Pop Mart, the collectible toy retailer, opened in May 2025 and is listed on Level 1 near Macy's.
The traditional anchors are still there. Macy's Clackamas store was not among the two Oregon closures the company announced in January 2025, and JCPenney and the Cinemark theater are both still operating. The change is happening in the spaces that emptied out, while the stores that stayed keep running.
The mall's calendar from here
Here is the order in which the new spaces are expected to open, marked by how firm each date is:
- Buffalo Wild Wings: open since Monday, Aug. 31, 2026, in the former Sears.
- Sky Zone: targeting early October 2026, according to its own location page, with no specific day announced.
- Kids Empire: tentatively by December 2026, and the company says the date could shift.
- Miss A: listed as coming soon, with no date published.
- Movement: expected in 2027.
- Oregon DMV: hoped for by summer 2027, with no date set.
- Former Sears upstairs and one ground-level space: still vacant as of early September.
For most Happy Valley households, the first real change comes this fall and winter, when the two kids' spaces open. The adult routines come later. Weeknight climbing sessions and DMV appointments are expected sometime in 2027, and that's when the old Nordstrom building should start drawing a steady mix of visitors from morning to night.
We follow changes like these because they shape everyday life in the neighborhoods we serve, from where families spend a rainy Saturday to how far you drive for a license renewal. If you're curious how new places like these fit into the bigger picture for your part of Happy Valley, The Portera Group is always glad to talk it through. Schedule a Strategy Session, and we'll bring the local detail.
