West Valley City mall getting face-lift
Valley Fair » Site undergoes expansion; businesses move in.
By Lesley Mitchell
The Salt Lake Tribune
Valley Fair Mall in West Valley City is adding an... (Paul Fraughton/ The Salt Lake Tribune)
In some of the most difficult times for malls and other retail developments, Valley Fair Mall in West Valley City is expanding -- and in the process, reinventing itself.
In-N-Out Burger has purchased a site for a new location at the mall, and by fall the center is set to have a Farr's Fresh Ice Cream, Famous Footwear and Ross Dress for Less, among other new retailers.
The aging mall could have died a slow death, just as any number of other suburban malls built in the 1960s to 1980s experienced. In fact, many 1980s-era malls are long gone, including Crossroads Plaza and ZCMI Center in downtown Salt Lake City, which were razed to make way for the new City Creek development being built in its place.
Instead of fading away, the 40-year old West Valley mall, just off Interstate 215 and 3500 South, is getting a facelift and nearly doubling in size.
There's the 100,000 square feet of additional retail space in the main mall and periphery, as well as a plaza and a park area. When the redevelopment is complete, the mall property will encompass nearly 1 million square feet.
Valley Fair isn't a tony shopping destination, and the renovation isn't likely to change that fact. But its days of decline appear to be over.
The new retailers will join such businesses as Costco, a Smashburger restaurant and a TGI Friday's. It's quite a step up for a mall that for decades had only a Red Robin restaurant and dollar theater.
"It was an undervalued, underappreciated real estate," said Gary Hall, leasing director. "It was in the second-largest city, but everyone was going everywhere else to shop."
Valley Fair's location near the highly traveled 3500 South corridor and right off I-215, however, makes it an attractive piece of real estate for commercial development.
Things began to change for Valley Fair after it was purchased by Utah-based real estate developer Satterfield Helm in 2005, with New York-based Coventry Real Estate Advisors joining as a financial partner in 2008. Today Coventry III/Satterfield Helm Valley Fair LLC and an affiliate, Satterfield Helm Management, are handling its redevelopment and management.
The Costco store, which opened two years ago, helped turn fortunes around for the mall, along with the addition of the restaurants, said Chris Monson, a retail and investment specialist with commercial brokerage Mountain West Retail and Investment in Salt Lake City.
Certainly, the city's desire to have a viable -- and vibrant -- mall property played a role in the fact that development has moved forward even in difficult times. As part of redevelopment, West Valley City allowed in 2006 the old Granger Elementary School to be torn down to make room for the Costco. A new school was built nearby.
In the past year, anchor JC Penney has been revamped inside and out. And now, the main mall building is being refurbished and the front part of the structure is being torn down and rebuilt to make room for the new tenants.
Valley Fair still has its challenges, like so many malls do these days. Mall managers still are trying to fill the large anchor space vacated by Mervyn's, which shuttered locations nationwide a couple of years ago. And as the mall is improved, owners must strike a balance between sought-after national tenants and the scores of smaller local tenants that settled in the mall years ago when rents were cheap and the property wasn't doing as well as it is today.
Chad Moore, a retail specialist with Mountain West Retail and Investment, thinks the mall's owners are handling the redevelopment well. He said the emphasis on value-oriented retailers, such as Costco and now Ross, will serve the mall well in coming years, given the economic downturn and the fact that consumers are very value-conscious.
"They have the right idea," he said of mall managers. "I think it will be successful project."
lesley@sltrib.com
http://www.sltrib.com/valleywest/ci_14322434