On this winter day, there were at least a few people walking laps around the mall. Others sat in the empty food court. Security walked around.
The directory was about 5-6 years old. At that point, the mall still had a lot of retailers.
In the background of the image, you can see the Sears sign. Almost all of the anchor stores are long gone. Most storefronts are empty. The movie theater is shuttered.
The decline of this mall did not happen immediately. Combine online shopping, lots of shopping options in the Chicago region, and COVID-19 and you get a nearly empty mall. And it will take years to redevelop the property and incorporate the new elements into the community.
Hundreds of apartments, a 600-vehicle parking garage and new retail and entertainment space are among an array of possibilities for the redevelopment of a key area of downtown Mundelein known as the “Bank Triangle.”
Suburban downtowns served different purposes in the past. They were economic and social centers in the midst of less developed suburban territories. Businesses located there sold more everyday goods including food and clothing. Banks and churches were there.
Now, suburban downtowns want mixed-use properties that match up downtown residents with restaurants, particular kinds of retailers, and entertainment and cultural options. These land uses bring in residents and money. They are perceived to be vibrant land uses. The other land uses have moved elsewhere or have downsized; banks have consolidated and have fewer branches, retailers are in strip malls and shopping malls, and more people moved to sprawling subdivisions further removed from downtowns.
This shift highlights a new version of suburban downtowns. They are now places to live and go to, not necessarily centers of community life. They have particular land uses and not others. And these will likely to continue to change in the future.
West Dundee and Bloomingdale officials have similar visions for the mall properties in their towns.
West Dundee sees a mixed-use development with residential, office, retail and entertainment. Bloomingdale’s consultants have drawn up conceptual plans showing residential, commercial and recreational development in place of the mall’s former retail buildings and parking lots.
Typically, villages stay out of the real estate business and leave redevelopment of retail centers to developers. But for West Dundee and Bloomingdale, taking ownership of their malls and clearing some obstacles, such as multiple property owners or restrictive covenants, were deemed essential for future redevelopment.
“Almost uniformly, every developer with whom we spoke stated that the site has too many complications — too many owners, too many covenants, too many uncertainties,” Nelson said last year. “The village’s aim is to bring simplicity to the process so reliable developers with established track records will be interested in partnering to reformat the area. Without municipal intervention, that simply won’t happen.”
I wonder if this is an instance where a large property owner – the owners of these malls – can afford to sit on these properties for a while to see if there will be a bigger financial return later. I remember reading in the past about parking lots in downtown areas; they are not flashing and they are not the preferred land use but the company who owns that lot can wait until there is significant demand for the property and then make a lot of money on selling the parking lot. Compared to these suburbs, the property owners may be less interested in moving quickly on a redevelopment plan. (This could also apply to recent conversations about suburban office parks and downtown office buildings: even vacant buildings might not need to be sold or redeveloped if an owner can afford to hang on to them.)
If I had to guess, I would go with open space or park space. Suburbanites would like this for multiple reasons: little noise and traffic, increased recreational opportunities, this limits future development on the location, and improved property values. Suburban homeowners do not want properties next to them to have more intensive land uses; they would prefer less activity.
At the same time, this puts communities and these suburbanites in a predicament. These office parks served particular purposes. They brought in tax revenues. They provided jobs. They provided status (particular if a big name company occupied the offices). Empty buildings are an eyesore and wasted opportunity. Warehouse and logistic parks would bring in money and jobs. Parks and open space do not generate their own revenues.
Before resisting everything that could replace suburban office parks, the suburban neighbors might want to consider what they would be willing to accept. Are there land uses that could aid the community and preserve some semblance of residential suburban life? Is there any room for compromise?
There are hundreds of zombie malls throughout the U.S. like the Berkshire Mall, more dead than alive. The older, low-end ones have lost at least half and, in some cases, more than 70% of their value since the industry’s peak in late 2016, according to real-estate research firm Green Street…
That’s when Namdar Realty and Mason like to swoop in. The New York-based real-estate partners are among the most prolific purchasers of U.S. malls. They make money by buying malls cheap and keeping them going, even as town officials beg them to pull the plug.
Bare said the community would be better served if the Berkshire Mall was turned into something more valuable. Ideally, a mixed-use property with housing and medical offices or educational space, and maybe some retail and restaurants…
Malls typically sit on large parcels of prime real estate—which often include nearby buildings such as restaurants as well as large parking lots—that can be subdivided and sold in parts, sometimes at a value exceeding the purchase price of the mall. The partners keep the malls open, but cut costs by appealing their property-tax bills and reducing expenses such as staffing and maintenance.
All the while, they continue to collect rent from the mall’s remaining retailers. When national retailers move out, Namdar Realty and Mason try to replace them with nontraditional tenants such as call centers, local small businesses, doctors’ offices and bounce-house venues.
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Here are some of the reasons communities do not like malls surviving in this state:
-They are not generating the kinds of tax revenues they did as a thriving mall.
-The land could be generating more revenue if used in different ways. Communities want to replace the tax revenues of the malls with other revenues. (And this is a reason housing might not be too appealing to some leaders.)
-A mall in bad repair and/or is partly to mostly empty is an eyesore. Gleaming and busy malls are a source of pride; struggling or dying malls are the opposite.
-Outside mall owners may not always be perceived as having the best interests of the community in mind. Imagine how locals might interpret their actions: someone is trying to profit off our struggles. They are impeding our progress just to make money for outsiders.
-Even if malls can be demolished or repurposed, it can be a hard path to putting new and worthwhile in its place. These outsiders are slowing the process or making it impossible to move on.
Even zombie malls will meet their fate eventually, either as unprofitable ventures that are sold and redone or as places that continue to generate profits. And if they can keep making money, are they really zombies?
Dennis Phillips had recently taken her staff to tour the Westfield San Francisco Centre. “We have to understand the possibilities of that building,” she explained. The mall loomed so large as a harbinger of San Francisco’s struggles that I decided to see the damage myself. When I was growing up in San Francisco, at the turn of the millennium, the opening of the Westfield mall had seemed like the capstone of the city’s rise. Now I expected a ruin – the remnant of a once triumphal age.
As I approached, I found the stretch of downtown around the mall lively and crowded. People in the local office garb of slacks and zip vests brushed past, thumbing their smartphones. In front of the Dawn Club, a storied jazz bar that Sheehy reopened this year, men in suits were playing a game that they called Doomloopin Bowling on a strip of AstroTurf. Inside the mall, which as of now has no closure date, I saw customers flowing from Bloomingdale’s. To my left, a Michael Kors salesperson chatted with a couple as, on my right, young men studied fancy watches in an I.W.C. Schaffhausen. The food court was noisy, and there were no free tables at Panda Express. The grimmest space was on the top floor: a Cinemark whose lease is up in the fall had gone dark early. “They’re closed,” a bored looking guard announced to no one.
In public declarations, Westfield – like Gump’s – laid the blame for its lack of business on the condition of San Francisco’s downtown. But in the past forty years the number of malls in the United States has declined by nearly three-quarters, and a tour of downtown San Francisco today, its streets packed, its bars busy, can seem an odd me-or-your-lying eyes experience.
The closing of retail shops in San Francisco was easy to see culminating in this mall when the mall operator recently handed back the property to the lender. A once thriving mall suffered from vacant properties. Its location was once a very busy part of the downtown between regular floods of downtown workers, residents, and tourists. I have been to this mall at least a few times and it was generally a lively spot where a cosmopolitan canopy might be possible.
Like many places, urban or suburban, what the mall becomes might be more important than whether the mall survives. What becomes of potentially valuable land near an urban core that once generated property and sales tax revenue? What use could be good for residents and the city long-term? This may be harder to envision in urban downtowns where a lot of property might soon be available for new uses.
Constructed in 2000 at the northwest corner of Naperville and Warrenville roads, the five-story glass and steel complex at one time was touted as a technological hub with the potential to sustain thousands of jobs.
But with the recent arrival of cranes, excavators and other heavy equipment, a new era is beginning for the 41-acre site that’s part of the city’s Interstate 88 corridor.
Oak Brook-based Franklin Partners — which in April finalized the purchase of 1960 Lucent Lane for $4.75 million — in June received a demolition permit from the city to raze the 500,000-square-foot building and the three-story parking garages on either side…
Discouraged by city officials to develop warehouses on the property, Franklin Partners replied by saying it would seek a technology-based alternative.
The arrival of a high-status tech company on this suburban plot helped give rise to more white-collar employers in Naperville plus numerous subdivisions.
It is too simple to say that the fate of this land could do much to affect Naperville’s future trajectory. At the same time, it is a large parcel of land that once helped affect Naperville’s future. It sounds like the city clearly does not want the property to become warehouses, but what could arise here that contributes to a vibrant future?
It’s a “good’ neighborhood now. And the land that Transfiguration once occupied will be turned into about a dozen single-family homes, where, in an area that was zoned for and still is largely home to two- and three-flats, the starting price of a new house is $1.35 million. Talk to me about the zoning on that one.
This week is the one I dreaded: the physical building, Transfiguration of Our Lord, is being torn down. I held out hope that the building that had welcomed and taken care of so many would be preserved. At the very least, I hoped that the land that nourished thousands of families would house a few more of them in the middle of a nationwide affordable housing crisis. But why build homes for two or three families when you can get rich selling a house to just one?
So the fences have gone up, and the building is coming down.
Processing the closing of a long-time religious congregation can be difficult.
But, there is also a suggestion above that these are two very different uses of land. According to this member, the church nourished families and the community. The church welcomed immigrants. Its school educated kids. The church was a gathering place. Churches in the United States do not pay property taxes, but they can provide services for the neighborhood.
In contrast, the buildings that will replace the church will be expensive single-family homes. These will provide private space for households within a desirable neighborhood. There is money to be made in the developing and selling of the buildings.
This could lead to a question: is land better used for organizations that serve the community or for single-family homes? If people care more about money, creating more real estate is the answer. If people want to emphasize community, there might be room for religious congregations and other neighborhood organizations, but they may need to sustain themselves. Americans value single-family homes and like making money. When congregations close, it is a relatively easy step in many communities to redevelop this land or reuse the buildings in ways that generate money and revenue.
Kansas City officials are now looking to repair some of the damage caused by the highway and reconnect the neighborhoods that surround it. To date, the city has received $5 million in funding from the Biden administration to help develop plans for potential changes, such as building overpasses that could improve pedestrian safety and better connect people to mass transit.
The funding is an example of the administration’s efforts to address racial disparities resulting from how the United States built physical infrastructure in past decades. The Transportation Department has awarded funding to dozens of projects under the goal of reconnecting communities, including $185 million in grants as part of a pilot program created by the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law.
But the project in Kansas City also shows just how difficult and expensive it can be to reverse long-ago decisions to build highways that slashed through communities of color and split up neighborhoods. Many of the projects funded by the Biden administration would leave highways intact but seek to lessen the damage they have caused to surrounding areas. And even taking out a roadway is just a first step to reinvigorating a neighborhood.
“Once you wreck a community, putting it back together is much more work than just removing an interstate,” said Beth Osborne, who served as an acting assistant secretary at the Transportation Department during the Obama administration and is now the director of Transportation for America, an advocacy group.
In the name of fast travel between outlying areas and the city, such highways removed people and buildings, disrupted economic corridors, and created barriers between neighborhoods.
From the examples provided in this article, it sounds like this money will be used to try to reestablish streetscapes. Wide highways made it difficult for pedestrians to walk between places. Businesses had to rely on vehicle traffic. Decades after the highways were constructed, there may be relatively little activity on roadways near the highways.
Simply creating better paths over a major highway could be helpful. Removing a highway can also help, as evidenced by at least a few projects in American cities. But, there is a lot that goes into a streetscape. It takes time and resources to recreate thriving neighborhoods with multiple factors at play. Even then, vibrant sidewalks and streetscapes are relatively hard to find in American communities given the other priorities Americans emphasize.
Frustrated by years of inaction by the owners of Stratford Square Mall, Bloomingdale has spent more than $5.6 million to buy former department store buildings and open space near the mostly deserted shopping center.
Now the village is trying to use its powers of eminent domain to take over the core of the mall itself. Bloomingdale has filed a condemnation lawsuit aimed at acquiring the property. Village President Franco Coladipietro called it an “act of last resort.”…
Bloomingdale has been buying mall real estate to facilitate a full-scale redevelopment of Stratford Square. The village paid $2.4 million for the vacant Carson’s department store, $2.15 million for the former Burlington building and $1.1 million for a vacant parcel east of the mall, between townhouses to the north and medical offices to the south…
“You have the potential of a brighter future. I understand that there’s risk. We look at it as a calculated risk,” he said. “And we’ve done the due diligence prior to engaging in the purchase of the properties.”…
To that end, the village opened a line of credit, or short-term loan, to pay for the purchase of the Carson’s, Burlington and undeveloped properties. The village also filed condemnation lawsuits targeting Kohl’s and the vacant Sears store to “keep everything on the same track,” Coladipietro said.
If all turns out well, the suburb will be able to say in ten or twenty years that the former shopping mall property is an asset for the community with new, vibrant uses.
But, this could also turn out poorly. The suburb has borrowed money to buy property. They are in court. The developer has not successfully pursued redevelopment; will the village be able to do better? What happens when the bills come due and/or the community cannot agree about what the mall property should become and/or potential developers are still not interested in the property?
Legally Sociable 