End of the road for huge mall planned for Joliet?

The Bridge Street Town Centre planned for Joliet was going to be big.

A billion-dollar development with 16 movie theaters and a shopping center boasting 1.5 million square feet of retail space.

There were going to be 800 homes and 200,000 square feet of office space over the 325 acres.

But signs touting the project along the Interstate 55 frontage road have quietly come down, catching Joliet officials by surprise and raising eyebrows.

City officials don’t know if it’s a sign the proposed mall project, which dates back to 2007, is dead or just continuing its long dormancy.

Bridge Street was supposed to be a lifestyle mall with higher-end stores on the northeast intersection of Interstates 80 and 55. The project languished after the recession hit in December 2007, but city officials still had hoped it would be built when the economy recovered.

Jim Haller, the city’s director of community and economic development, said he was unaware that O&S Holdings LLC, based in Beverly Hills, Calif., had its signs taken down. “Nobody checked in with us,” he said.

Officials from O&S didn’t comment on Friday.

Joliet Mayor Tom Giarrante said he hadn’t heard officially that the project was dead, but he also didn’t know whether it would go forward. The biggest stumbling block all along was access to the site, he said. The cost to create access from two directions — I-55 and Houbolt Road — was estimated at $100 million five or so years ago, he said.

“I’m sure it’s gone up substantially,” Giarrante said.

City Manager Tom Thanas, who said he has conversations with O&S co-founder Gary Safady every couple of months, has not heard that the company is abandoning the project. O&S still owns the land, though it’s probably worth 40-50 percent less than the company paid for it, Thanas said. Even if O&S doesn’t proceed, city officials have hopes that the site will one day be a retail haven that will kick substantial sales tax revenue to the city.

Construction was scheduled to begin in 2008, with completion in 2011.

Even as late as December 2009, the company was still talking about moving forward with the project and said it had letters of intent from Von Maur department store and Regal Entertainment, which planned to build a 16-screen movie theater.

There are seven boardedup, deteriorating homes on the site as well as fields filled with corn.