City officials are beginning talks with Regency Square Mall’s new owners, who bought the aging and largely vacant mall on Valentine’s Day for $13 million.
City Council member Clay Yarborough said he spoke Feb. 21 by phone with Elliot Nassim, a principal in the Regency Mall Realty LLC ownership group.
“It was general, mostly centered around his company’s desire to have a positive, viable asset for the community,” said Yarborough, whose District 1 includes the mall at 9501 Arlington Expressway.
Yarborough said Nassim confirmed his earlier remarks to the Daily Record “regarding the interest from some retailers who would like to be considered for tenancy.”
Yarborough said Nassim looked forward to more talks.
City economic development chief Ted Carter and Nassim spoke late Thursday afternoon about Regency Square, but neither detailed what was discussed.
“We’re in the process of setting a time to discuss the new owners’ vision for Regency Square,” said David DeCamp, spokesman for Mayor Alvin Brown. “An initial conversation happened today, and it was positive.”
Nassim said he spoke with Carter, executive director of the city Office of Economic Development, and he referred questions to him.
Paul Crawford, deputy director of the office, said Thursday the city wanted to see how it could play a role in helping the owners revive 47-year-old shopping center.
“We’ll meet with them because it is important,” Crawford said at City Hall after a 90-minute web seminar titled “Ready for a Facelift: Repurposing Aging Retail Centers” presented by the International Economic Development Council.
“We’ll make it like one of these projects,” Crawford said, referring to several of the developments discussed in the presentation, such as the One Hundred Oaks Mall in Nashville, Tenn. The presentation ended at 3 p.m., before Carter’s conversation with Nassim.
Like Regency Square, One Hundred Oaks was built in 1967-68 as a large enclosed suburban mall and fell into decline as population patterns and shopping habits changed. At more than 800,000 square feet of space, One Hundred Oaks Mall needed help.
While it was configured differently than Regency, which is a one-story mall other than the two-story anchor department stores, the One Hundred Oaks Mall was a two-story center whose top floor was vacant.
A buyer of distressed malls took it over, began an analysis, held design charrettes, studied parking and transportation needs, improved the mall’s infrastructure and hired brokers to assess the market for retail, office, residential and other uses.
One of those other uses was the one that flourished. Vanderbilt University Medical Center needed to expand and leased it as Vanderbilt Health 100 Oaks Mall to provide clinics and services and for use as business offices. Vanderbilt opened with a 12-year lease for 450,000 square feet of space and an option to buy.
The retail portion of the mall subsequently added tenants, and outparcels were developed with restaurants. A community room is available that is often booked.
According to the presentation, local government made no grants or incentives, but did improve the street network and intersections and provided a high level of cooperation from city code and zoning offices. Area property taxes rose, and the mall gained new life from the visitors to Vanderbilt Health.
The buyers of Regency Square haven’t detailed their plans, other than to say that they would bring in new tenants and consolidate existing mall tenants into the East Mall, and then explore their options for the West Mall.
The Dillard’s and Sears in the West Mall would not be included in any plans because those retailers own their stores. Regency Mall Realty LLC bought 1.1 million square feet of the 1.4 million-square-foot mall that sits on more than 100 acres. The mall portion that Regency Mall Realty bought was 38 percent occupied as of year-end 2013.
The web presentation outlined many uses for what it considers dead or dying malls, including strip centers. It discussed tearing down and rebuilding properties as lifestyle centers; “re-localizing” them as places for the community to gather for dining and entertainment; renovating them into offices, schools and operations and data centers; and many other uses.
Crawford said he couldn’t comment about Regency Mall Realty, a joint venture of Great Neck, N.Y.-based Namdar Realty LLC and Mason Asset Management Inc., until he heard their plans for Regency Square.
“It was one of the most prominent malls in the Southeast, the area around it is stable, you have a lot of synergy, you have great visibility,” Crawford said.
He mentioned two examples of smaller Jacksonville enclosed malls that were repositioned: Roosevelt Square from an enclosed mall into a project with retail strip centers, department stores and restaurants; and Metro Square Office Park, which was redeveloped for business and office uses.
He also said some strip malls around town have been renovated into medical plazas.
As for Regency, he said in addition to the uses outlined in the presentation, it also might have potential for a skating and sports complex, although that was just an example.
In general, he said, Regency has “great access, great parking, great bones around it, great opportunity.”
Don’t expect a serious consideration about one of the uses mentioned in the presentation: A zombie mall in England.
British company Wish.co.uk offers 2.5-hour zombie-battling experiences.
The wish.co.uk site for the Zombie Shopping Mall describes the experience: “Using state of the art special effects and large, blood-inducing props you’ll tackle a series of computer game like missions in a full-on ‘run and gun’ gore fest. … You and your hardy group of zombie annihilators tracking the living dead up and down the mean escalators of this mall of doom.”
Trader Joe’s to Daytona?
The Daytona Beach News-Journal reported Thursday that a 76.5-acre field on Daytona’s west side could soon be home to an 800,000-square-foot food distribution center for a national retailer that would create 450 jobs, and is referred to only as code name Alpha.
That sounds like the Trader Joe’s distribution center that was speculated for Jacksonville, although sources have said for months that the deal moved south to better serve its logistics.
The news-journalonline.com site said city and county incentives are in discussion and an announcement is expected in a few weeks.
The developer and end user of the distribution center will invest more than $88 million in capital improvements, Rob Merrell, a Daytona Beach attorney representing land owner Consolidated-Tomoka Land Co., wrote in a Feb. 20 letter to the city’s principal planner.
Daytona has been competing with other cities for the warehouse, and being near Interstate 95 and I-4 is an advantage, according to the news site.
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