City Council Goes Shopping for a Mall

City leaders are gambling they’ll be able to lure developers to build a regional mall by attending an annual conference of mall developers in Las Vegas.

All five council members, City Manager Mike Sedell and Brian Gabler, the city’s economic development director, were scheduled to spend last weekend at the Las Vegas convention.

“We’re going up there, and going in force,” Mayor Bill Davis said last week. City leaders hope that building a mall on an 80-acre lot on 1st Street will bring in such businesses as book, electronics and sporting goods stores, and major department stores.

Officials say connections made at the annual conference have helped shape much of the retail growth in Simi Valley in recent years.

While at the convention, city leaders expected to meet with Burnham Pacific officials, the owners of Mountain Gate Plaza, to discuss sprucing up or demolishing the shopping center, which has fallen on hard times, officials said.

Burnham Pacific officials have run a number of proposals past city officials, some of which call for tearing down much of the 30-year-old shopping center, Gabler said. The Edwards Cinemas there closed this month.