PRINT THIS STORY:

CHANGE TEXT SIZE:

REDEVELOPMENT: A PATH TO LESS RESISTANCE

Going toe-to-toe with outspoken environmentalists, headstrong municipalities and NIMBY-prone neighborhood activists is just part and parcel of being a developer in California.

And expect lots of trouble if the project involves drying up wetlands or cutting down redwoods.

Redevelopments, however, can be a path to less resistance, developers say.

“We’re already there and serving the community, and what the community wants is just to see us make the mall better,” said David J. Contis, executive vice president and COO of The Macerich Co.

Macerich acquires well-positioned properties and then kicks them into overdrive by adding lifestyle components and coveted tenants. It has malls lined up for revamping in Carmel, Corte Madera and Victorville.

For its part, Los Angeles-based J.H. Snyder Co. has begun targeting overlooked, low-income neighborhoods in its home city for redevelopments to take advantage of tremendous population densities and pent-up retail demand. One example is its $75 million West Hollywood Gateway, a multilevel, 250,000-square-foot urban in-fill center, which replaced abandoned warehouses frequented by drug dealers and prostitutes, says senior partner Clifford P. Goldstein.

Likewise, J.H. Snyder’s NoHo Commons, a $200 million mixed-use redevelopment now being built in North Hollywood, will turn old retail, empty lots and abandoned apartments and industrial buildings into pedestrian-friendly, live-work spaces served by 60,000 square feet of retail.

Such projects are almost always popular with residents.

“In many of the areas where we are building, we don’t have the typical NIMBY-type response,” Goldstein said. “It is generally with open arms that these communities welcome reinvestment in their neighborhoods.”

That has been the case in the city of Tustin, in Orange County, where Phoenix-based Vestar is building The District at Tustin Legacy, a 1 million-square-foot lifestyle center on the site of a former Marine base. The project is slated to open in October of next year.

Tustin officials chose Vestar for the project after visiting the company’s Desert Ridge Marketplace, in Phoenix, says Jeffery M. Axtell, Vestar’s Southern California project director. “They loved the idea of the lifestyle-pedestrian area mixed with larger promotional retailers,” he said. “They wanted us to bring that type of format to Orange County.”

Residents are happy that the footfall of shoppers will soon make up for the revenues lost when the military marched out.

— JG