Plan to Demolish, Rebuild Santa Monica Mall
By ANDY FIXMER
Staff reporter
Macerich Co. wants to tear down its Santa Monica Place mall and start over.
Company officials have been meeting privately with Santa Monica city staff and members of the City Council to hash out plans for a new open-air mall that would extend the Third Street Promenade to Colorado Avenue.
Randy Brant, a Macerich senior vice president, declined to comment on specific plans, but said that the concept under discussion differs from a plan floated two years ago.
“It is markedly different,” he said. “We are taking a read from staff and elected officials to ascertain whether we will go public with it.”
As described to city officials, the proposal calls for tearing down the existing 560,000-square-foot building and putting in three floors of underground parking. The new open-air structure would contain nearly the same amount of retail and restaurant space as the existing mall, upwards of 450 apartments and 85,000 square feet of office space.
“If we can get the nods for this project it will be very exciting,” Brant said.
Santa Monica Mayor Richard Bloom, who has been briefed on the plans by Macerich officials, said that as with all projects in the city, concerns over traffic and design are paramount.
Still, Bloom said Macerich was “generally on the right track” with its proposal and said the company “has gone back to the drawing board to make changes and improvements that they think are being responsive to our concerns.”
Two years ago, Macerich proposed keeping the Frank Gehry-designed mall intact but cutting a strip through its middle to allow the Promenade extension. The new project calls for a ground-up construction that would give Macerich the flexibility to fix other problems with the property, including its parking garages.
“They are really concerned the project be accepted by the public,” Bloom said. “So they are feeling their way through the process very carefully.”
Because Santa Monica owns the mall’s parking garages, any new project would require Macerich and the city to establish a partnership as part of the development agreement, Bloom said.
“The city owns parking structures and for anything to happen, it requires in essence a partnership between the developer and the city,” he said. “So there are common interests here in making improvements. I think we are happily forced to work together.”
Macerich’s new plans were first reported in the Santa Monica Daily Press.
