SIMI VALLEY : Mall Developer to Discuss Options

The costs of renting bulldozers and courting tenants will govern whether Simi Valley gets a full-scale shopping mall or a mere shopping plaza, a developer’s report says.

But the Los Angeles-based developer still plans to lay out all the options for Simi Valley’s mall of dreams in a presentation before the City Council on Monday night.

Forest City Development issued an economic report last month stating that the cost of luring department stores to a full-sized mall and building on the hilly, 129-acre site around Sand Canyon near 1st Street would make the project too expensive to work.

Although the community’s shoppers could support a mall, Simi Valley might have to settle for something smaller, such as a combination mall and shopping plaza, or something developers call a “power center”--a plaza anchored by several “big-box” retailers such as Circuit City, the report stated.

“Their proposal doesn’t preclude a mall,” Assistant City Manager Don Penman said Friday. “Their proposal simply says that what we could do with a power center as the first phase now. There’s adequate demand for that today. And we could pursue a mall and bring it on line at a later date.”

If city officials and the developer agree to that plan, a 300,000-square-foot power center would be built, Penman said. If the developer can secure enough tenants, it would then build an adjoining 700,000-square-foot shopping mall. And if not, a second series of stores would be built onto the power center, he said.