Mall Systems are Go

Old Navy is one of the retailers in heavy demand these days by malls planning significant expansions. Two existing shopping centers – Lakewood (Wash.) Mall and Marketplace of Brown Deer (Wis.) – have announced big upcoming construction plans with The Gap division in their sights.

Bed, Bath & Beyond, Michael's, Ross Dress for Less and GI Joe's are among the other tenants to be targeted by the new owners of Lakewood (Wash.) Mall, who intend to spend a year remodeling the shopping center before reintroducing it as Lakewood Towne Center. MBK Northwest, a division of MBK Real Estate (Irvine, Calif.), announced Monday that it had bought the mall, though it did not disclose terms of the purchase. The mall had been in the hands of a Wells Fargo Bank subsidiary.

The company plans to tear off part of the mall's roof and recruit a new, more-competitive list of retailers. Current, major Lakewood Mall stores such as Target, Gottschalks and Barnes & Noble Booksellers will remain open during construction. The mall's movie theater also will remain open as the new owners work to recruit three full-service restaurants to service moviegoers.

For some years, Lakewood Mall has been losing tenants to competing malls. As vacancies rose, so did worries in Lakewood about lost revenues from sales and property taxes. “We will come right out of the gate with the kind of retailers that consumers in this area have been leaving the market to find,” said David Moore, MBK Northwest's senior vp. MBK has established a regional reputation as a master of financial turnarounds and upgrades. In the Seattle area, the company has remodeled and added new tenants at Federal Way's SeaTac Village shopping center and at Parkway Supercenter in Tukwila, just south of Southcenter Mall.

Moore said MBK decided to buy the mall, in part, because the City of Lakewood is building a new city hall on the property. “That was the impetus for us to take another look,” he noted. A groundbreaking ceremony is planned in September, and shoppers at that time will notice that work on putting a new faade on the mall will start in October. The entire remodeling is expected to be completed by May 2002.

Old Navy store and an expanded Kohl's Department Store are leading the 58,000-square-foot expansion at Brown Deer. The center, owned by JDN Realty Corp. (Atlanta), was built in 1989 and now has 143,454 square feet.

The work, expected to be completed by February 2002, will include a 20,500-square-foot Old Navy store, and Kohl's will expand from 64,500 to 86,100 square feet, expanding into space now occupied by Michael's Arts & Crafts (which will shift to an addition being built just north of OfficeMax, which will also house Old Navy. (The store will be the area's second Old Navy store. The first, opened in 1998 at Brookfield Square, is said to have helped create a significant increase in business there.) Other new tenants will include a Bath & Bodyworks and an Applebee's restaurant.

Other improvements include the demolition of a former Hardee's restaurant and its replacement by a building that will house Applebee's and The House of Roth, a tailor. That building, at the center's main entrance off Green Bay Road, is scheduled to open this fall. JDN has owned the shopping center since 1998, when it purchased five Milwaukee-area shopping centers.