After Walmart bought the property in Monroeville, developer Cypress Equities said it was considering revitalizing the mall, but it didn’t mention a complete overhaul.
Those details didn’t come until last week, when mention of the plans were alluded to in a pitch by South Saturn Ridge, the limited liability corporation formed by Walmart to manage the property, to state leaders seeking $7.5 million to help cover the cost of demolishing the mall and its outbuildings.
It isn’t unusual for development to seek government aid for ventures such as this, an industry insider told TribLive.
“They’re looking to get maximum government benefit,” said Joe Bell, spokesman for the Cafaro Co., a Niles, Ohio-based company that owns malls, shopping centers and mixed-use developments in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Virginia and Washington.
“It’s really odd that Walmart would be interested in acquiring an established shopping mall that wasn’t struggling,” Bell told TribLive. “I was a little surprised by the Monroeville Mall situation.”
South Saturn Ridge is seeking state funding under the Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program, something that is independent of the state budget stalemate, according to program spokesman Ryan Nornhold.
Walmart spokesman Mark Rickel said the company is “very interested in being part of this redevelopment of the mall” but declined to share any specifics.
The state is seeking input about the projects through Oct. 30. Gov. Josh Shapiro isn’t under a timeline to announce awards, Nornhold said.
The program is designed to help fund projects that have a regional impact, create jobs and increase tax revenues.
The last round of funding saw about 400 awards from about 900 applications. There were about 800 applications in this round, Nornhold said.
Mercer County investment
About 80 miles north of Monroeville, in Mercer County, a developer is promising a $100 million investment that will transform a mall that saw its last anchor store, JCPenney, close last year.
Shenango Valley Mall was demolished in January using $3.5 million from state coffers.
The City of Hermitage sought the funding along with another $730,000 to build an access road, in partnership with Flicore, a Cleveland, Ohio-area developer.
The new development, billed as Hickory Fields, will include a Target, Chick-fil-A, Chili’s and Longhorn Steakhouse, Hermitage Business and Development Director Mark Longietti told TribLive.
Longietti is a former state representative who once lobbied the governor to support the Hickory Fields development.
“Here we have a distressed mall in the most heavily traveled corridor between Erie and Pittsburgh. We’re not Pittsburgh. We’re not Cleveland. We need to bring something to the table,” Longietti said. “This could be a transformational project for the region.”
The new development will replace a mall that opened in 1968 and was developed by Crown American. In its heyday in the 1970s and ’80s, the mall was also home to Sears, Kaufmann’s, a variety of smaller stores and an arcade.
It proved to be a less-crowded alternative to Eastwood Mall, a 30-minute drive across the Ohio border in Niles that’s the home base of the Cafaro Co.
The region is part of the greater Youngstown, Ohio, area that was a nexus of shopping mall development as it was pioneered by Cafaro and the DeBartolo Group, once led by former Pittsburgh Penguins and San Francisco 49ers owner Edward J. DeBartolo Jr.
DeBartolo was the developer behind Century III Mall in West Mifflin, which is being razed. In 1996, DeBartolo merged with Simon.
Demolition of Century III is expected to be completed next year.