Northridge : Store May Become Entertainment Center

The Northridge Broadway could be converted into a multiuse entertainment center if the department store’s new owner decides to sell the property, a mall official said.

Borrowing the general concept of the new Spectrum Entertainment Center in Irvine, the Northridge Fashion Center could design a high-tech leisure center combining theaters, restaurants and music, book and video vendors, said Donn Fuller, senior vice president at MEPC American Properties Inc., the Dallas-based owner of the mall.

Fuller said such a center would be the best possible use of the 165,000-square-foot, three-level store site, because it would distinguish the Northridge mall from other shopping destinations and help to generate foot traffic for mall tenants.

“I think it would be great for the Valley,” he said.

Fuller has floated the idea with Federated Department Stores Inc., the Cincinnati retailing giant that acquired the 82-store Broadway chain in October. The plan is “being reviewed by ourselves and the other tenants,” said Federated spokeswoman Carol Sanger. “We’re at least two to three months away from any decision.”

Federated has been converting many of the newly acquired Broadway stores to its Macy’s nameplate. But Federated is already remaking its Bullock’s store at the Northridge Fashion Center into a Macy’s.

Some Broadways at other locations are being sold or closed. But Fuller said if Federated decides to sell the Northridge Broadway and the land on which it sits, it’s doubtful that another department store buyer would surface.

Even though the store was rebuilt into a showpiece for the Broadway chain following the 1994 Northridge earthquake, the spate of retailing mergers and acquisitions in the past several years has left few possible buyers for the property.

Northridge Fashion Center also has Robinsons-May, Sears, Roebuck & Co. and J.C. Penney stores.