The City of Pleasanton has taken Simon Property Group and other stakeholders in the Stoneridge Shopping Center to task for failing to break ground on a 360-unit apartment complex.
The City Council lambasted Simon and three other landlords for not moving forward to redevelop the 44-year-old indoor mall at 1 Stoneridge Mall Road, SiliconValley.com reported.
Unless mall owners move ahead on building homes and redeveloping closed parts of the mall within two years, the East Bay city threatened to kill the project.
The city “is between a rock and a hard place” trying to get this mall project off the ground, City Manager Gerry Beaudin said during a June council meeting. If there’s no movement in the next couple of years, “we’re going to have to pull the plug on this piece.”
Last year, the city approved a 360-unit housing development at the mall to be started by Indianapolis-based Simon Property Group, the majority owner of the property. But the developer has yet to break ground.
A decades-old agreement between Simon and three other mall owners requires them to make unanimous decisions about new development, according to the news site run by the San Jose Mercury News.
But city officials say the mall owners continue to disagree about how to move forward at the 75-acre site. Over the years, the city has granted them six different plan extensions.
In June, the city set a January 2025 deadline for “significant forward progress,” according to SiliconValley.com.
“The idea here is to get the ball rolling. It’s not rolling right now. Nothing has happened,” Beaudin told the council. “This group of property owners has not cooperated with one another.”
Jerry Hunt, an owner of the mall’s JCPenney store, disagreed.
“We have no interest in obstructing anything out here. We did not get involved with Stoneridge and our ownership to obstruct anything,” Hunt told city officials. “I think we have a proven track record of working together.”
He said the Stoneridge owners have spent “countless hours together” and “more than six figures” on planning. He said owners have met “every other week” to chart the project, and then all of a sudden the developers at Simon Property Group “went quiet. Nothing happened.”
Pleasanton leaders said slowing foot traffic at the mall has contributed to the city’s $13 million deficit. Sales taxes at the mall once made up 22 percent of the city’s sales tax revenue. Last fiscal year, the mall took in $2.5 million in sales taxes, or 9 percent of the city’s overall tax.
Mayor Karla Brown said she personally has shopped at the mall over the years, and that she was “very direct” in expressing her desire for progress there. She has asked owners to add a fountain and a clocktower to its more than 165 shops and restaurants. The Sears store closed in 2019; Nordstrom pulled out in 2020.
“It was a thriving part of Pleasanton that is not as active as it used to be,” Brown said. “So I want to bring back the glory of Stoneridge mall.”
— Dana Bartholomew
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