[Phillip]

One anchor malls like Downtown Plaza are obsolete. A Target at Downtown Plaza will be convenient for those who live Downtown but it doesn't enhance DTP's shopping magnetism to residents from other parts of town. Everyone's got a neghborhood Target already. Soon even Davis!

I'd guess DTP's heyday, to the degree it had one, was 15-20 years ago. A lot of Downtown state workers had already moved to the burbs but the retailers hadn't followed yet and Galleria wasn't built. Downtown workers went to DTP on their lunch hour or after work to shop for things they couldn't get near home. Now most of the DTP stores are in Folsom and Elk Grove and Natomas too. Why walk up K and deal with the panhandlers and bad behavior?

Macy's alone can't draw tourists and suburban residents back. I doubt Target will do that either. Westfield hasn't been an enthusiastic advocate for Downtown, but if Crate and Barrel and Neiman don't want to build Downtown I don't think that's Westfield's fault. The stores basically make their decisions by the numbers.

If Downtown Plaza has a longterm future (and I'm not optimistic that it does) it will probably be as the place where Downtown and Midtown shop, not as a regional destination. Downtown Plaza needs a lot more people living Downtown. That's not happening so quickly. Even if Towers and Aura were built as planned that's just 2,000 people or so----not enough to save a mall. And still a one anchor mall after that, or one anchor plus Target.

To my mind the interesting question is how long will DTP hang on? Five years? Ten years? Fifteen? (With Towers & Aura almost in the cooler I need to find something else to be negative about now, lol.)