Quote:
Originally Posted by mello
What I'm trying to say is this is different than buying an empty lot and trying to build on it or buying city owned land 12th/Market, 7th/Market, Old Courthouse Site. The French Company outlayed HUGE amounts of cash for all those Westfield malls. So I'm sure they sold this prime parcel with a "Mall" on it to whomever for a pretty penny. The new owner isn't going to want to sit around and lose money on this site because its probably a ton of money.
For example the company that bought 12/Market had the capital sitting for a while before recouping investment but buying Horton Plaza is a mega investment with a structure you need to maintain and pay bills on like water, power, facility employees etc. Unless they got it for a steal I doubt they are planning to just sit and let it continue to rot for 3 more years. They will probably announce a demo shortly. Plus who can really pull NIMBY stuff in that spot its in the heart of downtown?
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Getting through the permit process is no joke. I'm working on a project in Kearny Mesa right now that is
far less ambitious than a billion dollar redevelopment a block away from a national historic district, we just finished the engineering and design but now just getting CEQA approval is going to take at least two years. There are a few ways you could speed up that process, but a development of that scale and in that area is going to have real trouble taking advantage of them.
I have heard a few rumors about Horton Plaza, one of the firmest being that Unibail isn't even going to consider any serious changes until they finish redeveloping UTC. Apparently they're still deciding just how big they want this project to be. There's at least one idea to knock down the parking structures, redesign the entrances, and 'open up' the mall's interior to the now vibrate downtown. There's another which would also do something like this, but additionally would add on several stories of apartments/condos above the main structure. And finally, there's a from-the-ground-up rebuild with several mixed use high-rises. Whatever they end up deciding, the current PDO requires over 1.6 million sq ft worth of retail/commercial so it going to remain some form of mall.