But this Fair was Escondido’s new shopping center constructed by well-known San Diego developer Ernest Hahn. This new shopping mall, and the adjacent Kit Carson Park energized an area that was mostly barren ground, stripped of topsoil to make adobe bricks many years earlier by the LR Green Family. This requirement gave birth to much of Kit Carson Park as well as the soon-to-be constructed shopping center. While Lake Hodges has suffered greatly in recent years, the cause has been San Diego’s failing dam to the west and not Escondido’s shopping mall. Of the original six independent anchors at the shopping center in 1985, only JC Penny remains in its original form.