Businesses flee Regency Square Mall without AC

[marcuscnelson]

More than two-week outage now, reportedly after lightning struck the building and damaged air handlers. Reportedly the inside temperature in some restaurants has reached 99 degrees.

https://www.firstcoastnews.com/article/news/local/regency-square-mall-has-no-air-conditioning-businesses-leave/77-319701b4-70eb-4256-a6bc-d08be728f4ec

I'd argue it's long past time for the city to show some leadership in reimagining this area instead of letting the place crawl on like a zombie. There's so much space to do so much with.

[thelakelander]

I'm not sure the city can do much, in terms of turning this dead mall around, other then buying the property and razing it (i.e. the Landing). Gateway, Normandy, Philips, Grand Boulevard, Roosevelt, etc. all fell apart too back in the 1990s. Those eventually ended up either as something else through the work of other ownership entities. Regency will eventually get there but it's days as a mall are over. It's probably cheaper for the owner to close the place down, then repair it.

[Charles Hunter]

I'm sure there are Code Violations that could help incentivize the owners to do something.

[marcuscnelson]

Decided to be goofy going into the weekend and waste a little time today putting together a concept of how one might redevelop the mall. The city could certainly be bold enough to do this and help meet regional housing demand but I don't think there's too much keeping an enterprising developer from doing this either.

Here's a big overview (note, this is absolutely not to scale, I am not an architect):



Inspired by Columbus Commons, this concept essentially leverages most of the existing mall's road layout (with some adjustments) to provide an urban street grid with buildable parcels that can be sold or ground-leased to developers. Think RiversEdge/The District but without having to first remediate everything and construct a bulkhead.

It includes roundabouts on two of the access roads, and eliminates some of the outer road in places where traffic can be redirected deeper into the core area. Eliminating the numerous curb cuts for parking aisles would provide the opportunity to include medians and other traffic calming tools to keep cars from endangering other road users. The blue lines represent multi-use paths for pedestrians and bikes, although I would imagine there being bike lanes and sidewalks on plenty of the other streets. It also includes an expanded transit hub, based on the one at Gateway Mall but still close to Atlantic Blvd in the event that the Arlington Expressway is eventually redeveloped or provides for a dedicated transit lane or rail line in the future..

JCPenney, Impact Church/Belk, and Sears remain as standalone buildings that can be repurposed for other uses, and as such include smaller parking areas dedicated to each, although they could also be usable by residents. I can imagine developers might want to include additional parking on whatever they develop with their parcels until JTA decides to run buses like a million people live in Jacksonville. The idea that came to mind for the Sears parcel in particular would be some sort of entertainment use, akin to NoCo Center downtown or perhaps the Live! venue proposed at Lot J. Hence leaving it with a pretty large parking lot, particularly one with substantial frontage along Southside Blvd.

At the center of the concept is a nearly 18 acre linear park, incorporating the sports fields that already exist while providing plenty of other amenities for residents and visitors. It also provides a small amount of potential additional building space if needed later. Obviously the uses and scales and density suggested here would almost certainly be different if actually built, but it'd provide an achievable roadmap to redevelop the mall area over time. As part of that, here are partial concepts that only redevelop half of the mall:

[jaxlongtimer]

I'm not sure the city can do much, in terms of turning this dead mall around, other then buying the property and razing it (i.e. the Landing). Gateway, Normandy, Philips, Grand Boulevard, Roosevelt, etc. all fell apart too back in the 1990s. Those eventually ended up either as something else through the work of other ownership entities. Regency will eventually get there but it's days as a mall are over. It's probably cheaper for the owner to close the place down, then repair it.

Just like Downtown, South Gate Plaza, Town & Country and Roosevelt Mall, much of the future is apartments/condos/townhouses.  Too much office and retail and not enough residential leads to this fate for many a property destined for a refresh.

Regency would be a great opportunity for a version of Tapestry Park on steroids.  One possibility might be to use existing buildings for ground level retail and build residential over the tops of them.  Residential would provide a built-in customer base for retail in addition to  visitors coming from off site.  Imagine what something like this could do to reinvigorate the greater Arlington/East Jacksonville areas.

[thelakelander]

Regency Square Mall owners say contract finalized to sell the Arlington shopping center:

https://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/news/2023/oct/02/regency-square-mall-owners-say-contract-finalized-to-sell-the-arlington-shopping-center/

[iMarvin]

Hopefully there's a plan to develop a massive mixed-use community there. Something like what Marcus illustrated above. There's room for thousands of units there...

[thelakelander]

My hopes aren't high. This group doesn't own the entire property. Other property owners like Sears, Dillards, and the church in the old Belk store, would all have to be bought out to do something like that on the property.

[marcuscnelson]

^Not necessarily. My concept was intended to allow some degree of flexibility in terms of existing owners. Dillards should be bought out as part of developing the street grid, but Sears and Impact Church could be essentially built around. The east side as I proposed it is all owned by "REGENCY MALL REALTY LLC ET AL" which I would imagine is what is being sold.

[Jax_Developer]

I don't believe this to be worth the undertaking/risk with several outparcels within the development. Ultimately the area needs to be leveled.. and outparcels here makes it that much more challenging. If it wasn't a magnet for homeless/crime, then I think that what you're saying Marcus would be possible.

[jaxlongtimer]

^Not necessarily. My concept was intended to allow some degree of flexibility in terms of existing owners. Dillards should be bought out as part of developing the street grid, but Sears and Impact Church could be essentially built around. The east side as I proposed it is all owned by "REGENCY MALL REALTY LLC ET AL" which I would imagine is what is being sold.

From what I have read, Sears could be for sale too since the stores were mostly acquired for their real estate to be sold off after the company was run into the ground.  Sears and Kmart have suffered the same fate as part of the same company today.  Always was about the real estate, not saving the stores. Sad but true.

Don't know about Dillards, but for a price, it probably could be bought if the building is empty.  Why not?

Is the church still active?

[marcuscnelson]

^The church appears to still be there. Dillards is mentioned in the article as still being a clearance center, which I imagine wouldn't be hard to close if redevelopment was happening.

I don't believe this to be worth the undertaking/risk with several outparcels within the development. Ultimately the area needs to be leveled.. and outparcels here makes it that much more challenging. If it wasn't a magnet for homeless/crime, then I think that what you're saying Marcus would be possible.

Would the Impact Church, repurposed Sears and repurposed or replaced JCPenney really make or break this? Ultimately the concept does demolish all of the mall buildings save for some big box parcels, which plenty of other mall redevelopments have reused or built around.

[thelakelander]

It could. If I'm risking my investment in Regency/Arlington,  I'd want control of the property and not be subject to a church having the central section of the land.

[realestatejax]

Regency Square Mall owners say contract finalized to sell the Arlington shopping center:

https://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/news/2023/oct/02/regency-square-mall-owners-say-contract-finalized-to-sell-the-arlington-shopping-center/

If anyone believes that they are under contract you're crazy.  They just happened to announce the sale to an undisclosed buyer days after receiving a letter from Yarborough?  I suspect that there will be a follow up in a few months and they will announce that the buyer walked away in due diligence. 

[thelakelander]

Hmmm....

Who would want to buy a broken down dead mall, that has a church in the middle of it and a significant portion of the property owned by two other entities, to immediately come in and have to spend millions to fix it up?  Gateway had more tenants operating in it, when it was shut down. The amount of money it takes to maintain a property that size is way more than these five tenants are generating the property owner in revenue. It's time to let these people out of their misery and shut this chapter of Jax's history down for good.

City issues code compliance citations to owners of Regency Square Mall

Owners say they are selling the mall and the buyer will work with the city to address repairs.

As of Oct. 4, five tenants remained operating inside the eastern wing – Regency Square Dental, Regency Health Food, Jimmy Jazz, Rogers Jewelers and food-court vendor Tokyo Sakura.

https://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/news/2023/oct/04/city-issues-code-compliance-citations-to-owners-of-regency-square-mall/