Long Beach Plaza May Get an Open-Air Overhaul
The new owners of Long Beach Plaza--a dreary, enclosed shopping mall that failed in its mission to spark a downtown revival--said Thursday that they plan a drastic overhaul that may transform the complex into an open-air shopping center with housing and a hotel.
The new center is expected to cost as much as $55 million and include a mix of tenants, including specialty retailers, grocery stores and restaurants. It is not yet clear which of Long Beach Plaza’s major tenants--JCPenney, Ross Dress for Less and Montgomery Ward Outlet World--would remain in the new, 450,000-square-foot mall.
“The traditional regional mall, for a variety of reasons, has not been successful there,” said Peter Henkel, managing principal of Coventry Real Estate Partners, a New York-based investment firm that purchased the property last year. “Everybody is of the same opinion . . . that the property is in need of repositioning and redevelopment.”
The proposal to rebuild Long Beach Plaza comes nearly 20 years after the mall opened with great fanfare and millions of dollars in public funding. Business and civic leaders were counting on the project to revive Long Beach’s once-thriving downtown shopping district.
But the mall failed to draw shoppers away from suburban rivals, and one of its main anchors, Buffums department store, closed in the early 1990s. The mall fell into receivership in 1996 after sales plummeted and tenants fled.
Meanwhile, downtown Long Beach has benefited from the recent opening of a new aquarium and the growing popularity of the Pine Avenue shopping district. But Long Beach Plaza must be revitalized if the downtown recovery is to continue, city officials say.
A mall overhaul “is fairly critical to the success of the whole downtown,” said Susan Shick, director of community development for Long Beach. “It’s time to redo it.”
Henkel’s firm is working in partnership with Developers Diversified Realty Corp., a national owner and operator of shopping malls, and Hopkins Real Estate Group, a Newport Beach developer that will oversee the project. Developers Diversified is a partner in the nearby Queensway Bay retail and entertainment project, and Hopkins rebuilt the former Los Altos shopping center in eastern Long Beach in 1996.
“We are working with the city to come up with a program and development that meets the needs of the community,” said Stephen Hopkins, president of Hopkins Real Estate. He said the development group is meeting with city officials and existing and prospective tenants to come up with a more detailed proposal for the mall.
