MALL OVERHAUL
Defunct mall owner, local firm working to bring Heritage Park back
WMIDWEST CITY hile Plaza Mayor at the Crossroads may be dead, an effort to create a multicultural mall lives on.
Now, the effort is focused on Heritage Park Mall in Midwest City.
SRM Global Partners, a firm that worked with Plaza Mayor to bring retail tenants representing all of the Oklahoma City area’s ethnic communities to its building, is working with the owner of the longdormant Midwest City mall to accomplish the same thing, a spokeswoman said.
“We focus on multicultural economic development,” a SRM Global Partners spokeswoman said about plans to bring retail, offices and services back into the building’s vacant space.
“Our statistical data and demographic studies (show it’s feasible),” she said. “Being where it is positioned, it has the perfect recipe for reopening as a mall geared toward small business and drawing the attention of national tenants.
“The goal is to combine retail, services, community and culture in one space. We welcome small business owners . ... They are the framework and foundation of our economy,” she said.
“It has proven to be a good recipe across the country for malls that have closed their doors and chose to reopen.”
She observed Midwest City is a diverse community, with redevelopment efforts in full swing to the south, west and north, and added the community’s excited about the mall’s plans to reopen.
“With the development going on, it (Heritage Park Mall) is a meeting ground.”
During its time working with Plaza Mayor, she said SRM had been able to bring in nearly three dozen retailers into the building through its efforts to market the property.
It also worked hard to get people interested in coming back to the building by hosting various types of events, including
heritage festivals for the city’s Central American and Asian communities.
She predicted SRM will succeed at Heritage Park Mall as it implements the same type of strategy used at Plaza Mayor.
“This will give people a place to come together.”
The activity would be welcome, as the mall’s last retailer closed its doors earlier this year.
History spans 40 years
According to information put together for potential redevelopment proposals for the mall, on the northwest corner of E Reno Avenue and Air Depot Boulevard, Heritage Park opened in 1978 with a Sears, Dillard’s, Montgomery Ward and Wilson’s (later acquired by Service Merchandise) as its main anchors. But, 20 years later, the Montgomery Ward and Service Merchandise were closed. That was followed by the closure of the Dillard’s in 2007, and various other smaller retailers also began moving out.
By 2010, the only major retailer left was Sears. The mall also underwent numerous ownership changes. In 2004, the mall was sold by Simon Property Group to local investor Dan Dill for $4.1 million, which was less than half of the mall’s assessed value at the time. In 2004, much of the mall’s space still was owned and operated by national department store anchors, including Dillard’s and Sears. The remainder was leased to smaller retailers, including Bath & Body Works, Finish Line, General Nutrition Centers and Foot Locker.
Dill expressed his intent to renovate the mall, but that didn’t happen.
Also, in December 2004, Ahmad Bahreini, the mall’s current owner, joined a partner to buy the Montgomery Ward building at the mall through an auction sale. Montgomery Ward had sought bankruptcy protection in 2001, and closed all of its stores.
In 2005, the mall sold two more times, first to a company called 110 A.M. LLC, and then to a Southern California investment group for $7.8 million.
Again, renovations and upgrades were discussed by the new owners, but never happened. In 2010, the mall formally closed its doors. Bahreini picked up ownership of about 230,000 square feet of the main mall in 2011, at a steeply discounted $1.3 million.
Until earlier this year, the only significant retailer at the mall was the Sears on the building’s east end. It closed several months ago.
The other main tenant is Life.Church, which transformed the former Dillard’s store on the mall’s west end into its Midwest City campus in 2011.
Redevelopment sought
In 2016, Midwest City’s Hospital authority and its City Council spent $55,000 to hire Catalyst Commercial to work with Bahreini to come up with some redevelopment proposals for the property.
One proposal involved redeveloping the mall’s center section into retail spaces for four big tenants, building a YMCA on the mall’s north side, and adding outlying commercial pads on the Reno frontage. The Life.Church and Sears spaces would have remained standing, assuming both would be operating into the future.
A second plan proposed demolishing the mall’s main section, keeping the Life.Church and Sears spaces standing and adding outlying commercial pads on the Reno frontage. It proposed taking the space formerly occupied by the mall’s main section and turning it into a park, and those plans also called for building town homes and single family homes on much of the remaining property north of the original mall.
This week, the SRM spokesperson said Bahreini was grateful for the opportunity to work with the consultant to develop potential redevelopment schemes for the property.
“While those proposals would have done some good things for the property, the owner has always had his own vision for what he wants to happen,” she said. “At the end of the day, he wants it to reopen as a mall.”
The spokesperson said she believes SRM will have success leasing some of the mall’s space fairly quickly, adding that there’s significant community interest about what’s ahead for the property.
SRM hopes to reopen at least a portion of the mall (the western half between the mall’s main, south entrance and Life. Church) within the next six months, and she said it has plans to continue finding tenants for its remaining vacant space beyond that point.
“The plan is, we hope to reopen the mall’s doors in late winter,” she said. “We hope to start our second phase in the spring.”
Midwest City officials, meanwhile, are watching.
Robert Coleman, the community’s economic development director, agreed there’s a high degree of interest in the property’s future. On Wednesday, he said the city is working with SRM and Bahreini to cultivate potential leads for leases in the space.
“Heritage Park Mall sits a tone of the city’s most vital intersections and there has been a lot of public interest in seeing the mall returned to service,” Coleman said. “We are continually asked about its future.”