Far as City Figures, It Has Four Options When It Comes to Saving Former Red Bird Mall

By Robert Wilonsky Mon., Aug. 17 2009 at 9:15 AM

Categories: News

Perhaps you recall that back in June, the Urban Land Institute wrote of the former Red Bird Mall, "More than half the floor space is vacant -- feels lonely."

Now that the city council's had two months to digest the Urban Land Institute's 99-page report on Southwest Center Mall, formerly known as Red Bird, the Economic Development Committee is tasked with figuring out how involved the city's going to be in keeping the doors open. Far as the committee figures, it has four options: Dallas could act as principal developer (which would involve buying up the property by no later than 2012 with money from a new bond program), serve as a "facilitator of development" (which would involve a partial city purchase of land), help recruit new businesses to come into the old mall or do nothing at all and hope for the best, fingers crossed and all that.

ULI's report more or less demands the city get involved pronto, but it's hard to say how the cash-poor city's going to come down on this one, after it already spent $120,000 in economic development grant money on the ULI report. For this morning's meeting, city staff has cooked up quite the pros-and-cons list, while the briefing document suggests that staff will draft a request for proposals from real estate pros to "assist in assessment and implementation of a land assemblage strategy," should it come to that. Which reminds me: How's Valley View doing these days?