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RECLAIMING THE CROWN

City hopes $90 million redevelopment will put Buena Park on top again

BY DONNA MITCHELL

Almost a year after Buena Park (Calif.) Mall’s re-emergence from a five-year public-private redevelopment as Buena Park Downtown, municipal and mall officials seek more than just to restore profitability to a blighted center. They hope to restore a little civic pride.

Buena Park Mall was one of the first regional shopping centers in California’s Orange County when it opened in 1961. An open-air center at the time, it thrived, doing especially well during the 1980s, says Rosalind J. Schurgin, executive vice president of The Festival Cos., the Los Angeles-based firm that leases and manages the center and directed the redevelopment. With Sears and the then-May Company, part of the May chain of department stores, as anchors and about 50 in-line stores, Buena Park Mall was the primary shopping destination for the 680,000 people living within a five-mile radius. (Buena Park, a city of 78,200, is about 20 miles south of Los Angeles.)

By the early 1980s the mall had undergone two expansions. The first, in 1978, transformed it into a two-level enclosed center. During that phase the owners, privately held City Freeholds, brought in J.C. Penney. The second expansion added an eight-screen cinema.

But the center’s fortunes began declining in the ’90s. Rival developers built new centers nearby and also redeveloped old ones. Among these were the Brea (Calif.) Mall, about eight miles to the north, which underwent a $120 million redevelopment in 1990 with a new wing of 42 in-line tenants and a Nordstrom. Cerritos (Calif.) Towne Center, an open-air community center, opened in 1994 with 526,000 square feet of major power center tenants and small shops.

Quick as that, Buena Park Mall was outdated, and occupancy, foot traffic and sales fell. By 1996, when Festival began the redevelopment, anchors and in-line stores alike were posting sales of just $120 per square foot, down from $133 per square foot in 1998, according to the California State Board of Equalization.

The community was crestfallen that its once-beautiful mall now looked so shabby. “There was pride at stake,” Schurgin said. “[Residents] were unhappy to find themselves in that predicament.”

In 1993 the Pritzker family of Chicago (which owns the Hyatt hotel chain) bought the mall and in 1998 set about refurbishing it and developing the surrounding site.

Festival reworked the property as a 1.2 million-square-foot “retailing district” divided into three parts. Buena Park Mall, the original property, remains enclosed but now comprises 1 million square feet of renovated retail space. Buena Park Place, a new power center section, is across the street from the mall’s La Palma Avenue entrance; this section’s last pad is now being finished. Behind the mall is the third section, a 150,000-square-foot, open-air, retail-entertainment component called Park Central, anchored by a 91,000-square-foot, 5,000-seat Krikorian Metroplex cinema.

Apart from the enclosed portion, the redevelopment incorporates open-air streetscape designs throughout, beginning with a wide sidewalk in front of Buena Park Mall. The mall’s food court is called Food Park, and the walkways are named Park Avenue and Park Boulevard.

The city of Buena Park backed the $90 million project with $5.9 million in tax-free municipal bonds to help fund streets, curbs and landscaping, says May Hui, the city’s economic development director. The city has pledged 50 percent of projected sales taxes from the improved property to repay the bonds.

Enclosed no more: A bright open-air center replaces the old two-story mall.

Wal-Mart and Sears anchor the renovated mall, which includes Bed Bath & Beyond, DSW Shoe Warehouse and Ross Dress for Less. The open-air portion boasts the new cinema and some restaurants and specialty shops. At Buena Park Place shoppers will find Circuit City, Kohl’s, Michaels and some small-shop tenants.

Thanks to the refurbishment, at press time Buena Park Downtown was set to post $250 sales per square foot for 2003, according to mall officials.

For locals, the center is not merely a place to shop, but also to gather. Buena Park Downtown regularly stages community events, ranging from Tai Chi lessons to Family Fun Nights, all of which are well attended. The center, said Schurgin, “is used by the community as their new town center.”

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