Tenants Try to Shake Pall Over Mall
After months of uncertainty and fears that The Vineyard would be sold to an out-of-state developer and torn down, merchants in the troubled Escondido shopping center now hope a local investor will buy it and restore it as a quaint alternative to large, cookie-cutter malls.
The 18-year-old center, a maze of weathered-wood shops and offices surrounding a gazebo, has lost about half its retail tenants over the past couple of years. It has outlasted several owners and has been on the market for nearly a year.
Plans by Mesa, Ariz.-based Mariah Properties to buy the center and demolish most of it to build a supermarket recently fell through, and the second-highest bidder, Escondido Swap Meet owner Joe Crowder, now plans to bid again.
Dan Stepniewski, Crowder’s real estate broker, said Friday that Crowder has notified the Resolution Trust Corp. that, “if the property is still available, we’re interested and we’ll submit an offer, a bid, on or before Oct. 21.”
Crowder, an Escondido resident, over the last month has analyzed the property, which lost some tenants during Mariah’s lengthy escrow. Stepniewski said the offer would probably be less than the current $4.6-million asking price, which he said is more realistic than the initial $7-million price tag.
Crowder declined to reveal what his initial bid was when the federal RTC put the center up for sealed-bid auction.
“If we do wind up purchasing the center . . . we don’t intend to demolish it,” Crowder said. “We would revitalize it, maintain the unique atmosphere it’s got.”
Meanwhile, merchants are tired of seeing more and more “For Lease” signs around them--and of riding out the rumors from Mariah’s ill-fated escrow.
“It’s the biggest tease since (Ross) Perot,” said Saemi London Marcus of the Fabulous Finds clothing boutique. “The notoriety was very negative; it put us almost out of business. People were surprised we were still here.
“We’re surrounded by neighbors out of business. If there’s nothing to window shop, there’s no foot traffic,” said Marcus, fashion consultant for the factory-direct boutique, which benefits North County Interfaith Council hunger programs.
Joan Peet, owner of the Vineyard Bakery, said she was relieved when Mariah backed out, but remains apprehensive about The Vineyard’s fate despite her own relatively steady business.
“It’s the uncertainty. We’re fine for the time being. We know we can get through Christmas,” she said. “I’m taking it a day at a time.”
Susan Mattern, a consultant to The Vineyard Merchants Assn., added: “It was draining people so much. People were just opening their doors and waiting for the next lightning bolt to come down.”
However, there is a new delicatessen in the center and a teen dance club is set to open soon.
“Actually we’re in better shape this year than this time last year,” Mattern said.
When it opened in October, 1974, The Vineyard featured busy boutiques and weekly entertainment in the gazebo area. But now business is dismal in several shops, many of which are surrounded by empty units. Merchants blame the recession, competition with large, enclosed malls and a series of owners they say have failed to find a marketing niche.
But mostly they blame what they said has been shoddy treatment and poor communication by the RTC and Mariah, the latter of which they accuse of trying to intimidate them out of their leases so that a 90,000-square-foot Smith’s Food King could be built on the site.
“They were telling me that I had to be out by the 31st of December. That’s my busiest time,” said Peet, whose bakery has six years left on its lease.
The RTC took over The Vineyard last year after federal regulators seized FarWest Savings and Loan, which itself had taken over the center during the previous owner’s bankruptcy. The RTC, which sells off assets of failed thrifts, then put the property up for sale.
Mariah submitted the high bid. Merchants said its representatives offered them inadequate relocation cost reimbursement, and the escrow stretched on for months, finally falling out Aug. 21, Mattern said.
Officials with Mariah Properties, the RTC and Institutional Property Resources, the Los Angeles asset management company that maintains the center, did not return calls.
Rolf Gunnarson, executive director of the city’s Community Development Commission, said Smith’s Food King representatives had asked the city for economic assistance for their move but that the city rejected the request because it perceived insufficient additional revenue from having another supermarket in the area.
Throughout the process, the RTC has let the center become run down and has discouraged new businesses from coming in, said Mattern and some tenants.
Mattern said the RTC has “shot themselves in the foot” by insisting on new lease clauses that allow the landlord to terminate the contract with only five months notice. New retailers generally need at least six months just to see profit, she said.
New and established retailers alike are gun-shy about The Vineyard because of the sale troubles and because it has been poorly marketed since long before the RTC took over, according to Mattern, Peet and Marcus.
Shopping center experts say dramatic marketing strategies are needed for small centers in the face of competition from one-stop malls such as North County Fair. They encourage developing a unique identity, both in appearance and by attracting specialty shops.
Merchants and Gunnarson also suggested installing a food court. And Mattern said any new owner would be wise to lure stores that attract budget-conscious consumers. For example, The Vineyard now has a 99-Cent Warehouse, a movie theater that screens second-run films for $1.50 and the Fabulous Finds discount women’s clothing shop.
“It’s going to be one of the trends, a draw in for other stores,” Mattern said. “The ‘90s are going to be puritanical, I think that is going to be the best word--people are not going to just go out and play with plastic.”
Crowder, while declining to name specifics, said he will use “creative promotion” to “make it into a good neighborhood center” without trying to compete with large malls.
“When you’re local and you’re personally involved in something you pay more attention to it,” he said. “This center needs a lot of special attention.”
Crowder said he has no illusions about a swift turnaround. “It’s going to need a lot of money to bring it back to life. We don’t expect to (initially) make money on the center.”
The Vineyard isn’t the only shopping center in Escondido to experience rocky times recently. Just one block west, Escondido Village Mall, the first enclosed mall in Southern California, has given up trying to compete with the large malls it helped launch.
After the loss of anchor stores Walker Scott and Sears, the latter to North County Fair, “you had no draw anymore,” owner Norm La Caze said. “The mall just didn’t work.”
The 28-year-old Village Mall has converted to an outdoor strip mall, a throwback to older neighborhood shopping centers that includes a two-chair barber shop, ice cream parlor and, by early 1993, a Ralph’s supermarket, Payless pharmacy and photo developing shop.
“That seems to be exactly the prescription for that property,” said Gunnarson, noting increased street exposure.
But The Vineyard does not lend itself to quick conversion to outdoor strip mall. Nor should it, say merchants. They want it to keep its cozy cobblestone flavor.
“Even as old and dilapidated as it is, it still is unique compared to strip centers,” said Phil Perrone, general manager of the Acapulco restaurant and president of the merchants association. The Mexican chain restaurant, which is visible from East Valley Parkway, has fared better than many of its neighbors in the interior of the center throughout the past year.
