New Owner Plans to Rebuild Ailing Huntington Mall

Most of the Huntington Beach Mall, which has languished for the better part of a decade while its competitors adapted to a changing retail climate, is expected to be torn down and rebuilt as an open-air shopping center with specialty retailers, upscale restaurants and a multiscreen cinema.

Irvine-based Ezralow Retail Properties LLC said Monday it plans to buy the struggling center for about $50 million and sink at least another $50 million into redeveloping it. Demolition should begin in January.

“We’re going to tear down a major, major chunk of what’s there now,” Ezralow President Douglas Gray said. “We literally are going to remodel the entire center.”

The Montgomery Ward store, whose Chicago-based parent company announced Monday that it has emerged from bankruptcy, is not part of the acquisition.

The new center, which at about 800,000 square feet will be slightly smaller than the current mall, will include apparel, electronics and sporting goods retailers, Gray said. Most will range in size from 20,000 to 50,000 square feet. He declined to name the new tenants because negotiations are ongoing.

Mervyn’s, which is not being torn down, and Montgomery Ward will be the only department stores in the new center, he said.

Circuit City and Staples, currently located in a 92,000-square-foot shopping strip apart from the main mall, will be incorporated into the new center, he said. That separate strip, where Barnes & Noble Booksellers and Zany Brainy also are located, will be remodeled and expanded by 18,000 to 23,000 square feet, perhaps adding more second-story space for offices.

The new mall should be complete by the end of 2000 or the beginning of 2001, Gray said.

The Huntington Beach Mall--also called Huntington Center--has struggled for years, overwhelmed by competition from Westminster Mall, 1 1/2 miles away, and the higher-end South Coast Plaza, about six miles away. Large and small retailers have fled, including JCPenney, which bolted for the Westminster Mall in 1993, and the Broadway store, which closed in 1996 and remains vacant.

The city of Huntington Beach received $858,000 in sales tax from the Huntington Beach Mall last year, compared with $1.5 million in 1990, said David Biggs, the city’s economic development director. He predicted that the new center will generate sales tax of $2.1 million to $2.4 million.

“It’s been on a downhill trend for quite a while,” Biggs said. “We’re anxious to see it redeveloped.”

So are some of the shoppers who roamed the quiet mall on Monday as country music droned in the background and twinkling lights dripped from the ceiling where an atrophied section of the center is blocked off.

“I would say it’s about time,” said Jay Benitz, a 45-year-old Huntington Beach resident. “This place is dead. Since Broadway closed down, this place went down the drain.”

Two women shoppers remembered the center’s heyday, when stores weren’t standing empty.

“I can remember when it was really nice, when the Broadway was here,” said Beverly Kirkpatrick, a retired Irvine resident. “It’s like a ghost town now.”

The redeveloped plaza will be “upscale, more urbanized,” Biggs said, “not unlike what you see at Metro Pointe” in Costa Mesa, which is anchored by Best Buy, Marshall’s, Old Navy, Nordstrom Rack and an Edwards theater.

“There’s a lot of pent-up demand in our community for retail, and our residents are quite anxious to see something happen at Huntington Center,” he said.

But some of the mall’s small retailers wonder about their futures.

Bob Soofi, who with his wife owns a baked goods shop called Grandma Buffalo’s Chips, said he feels a sense of hopelessness about his predicament.

Using his savings, Soofi said, he opened the shop eight years ago. Then, he had 12 employees and seven times the sales he has today, Soofi said. Now, family members help him keep the store going, he said.

The mall owners have not told him what will happen to his store, he said.

“They’ve said, ‘Hang in, good things are going to happen,’ ” he said. But he is worried. “We are not big Corporate America.”

The mall’s current owner, Santa Monica-based MaceRich Co., which bought the center in 1996, had been working with the city to redevelop the center for the last couple of years. But just before the proposal was set to go to the Planning Commission, it was shelved, Biggs said.

MaceRich said it does not comment about pending sales or acquisitions.

Ezralow officials said MaceRich put the center up for sale about two months ago, and Ezralow moved quickly to snap it up, drawn by its prime location on Beach Boulevard, just off the San Diego Freeway.

“It’s probably one of the premier sites in Orange County that could [become available] in the next five to seven years,” Gray said.

The center’s new design is not yet fully conceived, Gray said.

“If [Montgomery Ward] stays, they’re going to remodel it to follow with the architectural style of the whole center,” he said.

The restaurants and cinema--which will have 22 to 25 screens--will take up about one-third of the center, with the remainder for specialty retailers, Gray said.

Ezralow Retail is a subsidiary of the privately held, Calabasas-based Ezralow Co., a 35-year-old real estate development firm that has built more than 6 million square feet of industrial, retail and office space.

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Mall to Fall

Much of the struggling Huntington Beach Mall will be demolished and rebuilt as an open-air shopping center, complete with a 2-to 25-screen theater complex. The make-over should be completed by the end of next year or the beginning of 2001.

Key Dates

Octobert, 1986: Mervyn’s opens as new anchor tenant.

November, 1986: Mall completes $9-million expansion and renovation that includes 56,000 square feet of new store space, a food court and Telflon roof system.

February, 1993: J.C. Penny Co. details plans to open new stores in Westminister and Brea malls while closing its Huntington Beach Store.

May, 1993: Mall renovation includes new skylights and lighting.

June, 1996: Federated Department Stores announces it is closing Broadway, a mall anchor.

March, 1997: Edwards Theatres announces it will build a 22-screen, 5,000-seat complex at a made-over mall.

Sources: Ezralow Properties, Times reporting; researched by LESLIE EARNEST and LOIS HOOKER / Los Angeles Times