Retailers must be out by June 30 so demolition and work on a redesigned mall can begin.
By ANNE LINDBERG
Published February 22, 2004
PINELLAS PARK - It's official: ParkSide mall, at least in its current configuration, has about four months to live.
"The retailers have all been notified the mall is closing June 30," said John Sabow, development director for Boulder Venture South LLC. "We're basically closing the place and tearing it down."
Applebee's and ParkSide cinemas will be the only businesses that remain. The Amoco gas station on Park is not on the mall property, so it will not be included in mall plans.
Although there will no longer be an ice skating rink at ParkSide, mall owners and city officials are looking for ways to move the rink elsewhere in Pinellas Park.
"I would love for the community to show me a way they could come and get (the rink's mechanical systems) and put it somewhere so it could stay in the community," Sabow said.
That would make Pinellas Park officials happy.
"We're kind of waiting to see what will happen there," said Susan Walker, the city's director of business and business development. "We would, of course, want to keep it in Pinellas Park."
Nick Flaskay of the FunLeague Group, which owns the rink, did not return a phone message asking for comment.
Reconstruction is planned to begin July 1.
When complete, the mall will be turned inside out, with stores around the perimeter and parking in the middle. An added feature will be upscale, two-story townhomes on both sides of 70th Avenue N at 41st Street.
Boulder Venture indicated at a Thursday meeting with mall neighbors that the stores will be built first and the townhomes will come later, Walker said. The company plans to submit further plans to the city later this week and hold a kickoff for the project in late March or early April.
"We'll be unveiling the color renderings and the tenants that will be coming in," Sabow said. "Everything up until now has been very preliminary."
The ParkSide name will die with the mall, Sabow said.
At first, Boulder Venture planned to call the development "Park Place," as in the Monopoly game. But that was taken.
So Boulder Venture asked the 12 neighbors who were at Thursday's meeting what they thought would best work for both the shopping center and the townhomes.
Suggestions included: Shoppes at ParkSide (TownHomes at ParkSide); ParkSide Shoppes (ParkSide TownHomes); Centre Shoppes of ParkSide (TownHomes of ParkSide); ParkSide Centre Shoppes (ParkSide Centre TownHomes); or Shoppes of Pinellas (TownHomes of Pinellas).
The neighbors were generally pleased by what they saw, said Mary Osborne, who attended Thursday's meeting.
"They all agreed it was very nice," Osborne said.
There were some reservations about the townhomes on the south side of 70th Avenue, however.
"That's right in front of my house," she said. "I just don't care for that part of it. Otherwise it was okay."
Boulder Venture's plans to turn the mall inside out are the latest and most comprehensive effort to rejuvenate the mall, which was built in 1977, about the same time as Tyrone Square Mall.
By the early 1990s, the mall was failing and most of the big chains pulled out. The lender, John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance, took over and poured millions into an interior renovation.
Hancock brought in the ice rink and the 16-screen cineplex. It also changed the name from Pinellas Square to ParkSide.
Mom-and-pop stores became tenants, lured by breaks on rent. Many storefronts became offices: A place to pay cable TV bills or buy a train ticket.
The city temporarily located its library there while that building was being redone. The Pinellas Park/Mid-County Chamber of Commerce has offices there but will leave next year when the city's faux train station is complete.
The redo and name change failed to draw big tenants. Montgomery Ward went bankrupt and closed. JCPenney turned its store into an outlet.
Hancock finally tired of struggling to find tenants and sold it to Boulder Venture last May for $12-million. Boulder Venture also bought the Dillard's and JCPenney sites as well as the Leverock's and some other property nestled on the south side of the mall between the restaurant and the parking lot.
Initial plans were filed with Pinellas Park in October and showed the mall being razed to make way for an open plan much like the renovated Clearwater Mall.
Since then, the mall has trudged toward its new future: Waldenbooks moved out. Dillard's closed last month. JCPenney announced it will close on or before May 1.
Boulder Venture at first said the new mall would be constructed in phases. That would allow tenants who wanted to remain to stay in the old building until a new one was erected. They could then move to the new building while the old was razed.
But that proved unfeasible, Sabow said. So retailers have been given time to clear out by the June 30 closing date. Sabow said he hoped some might return to the rejuvenated mall.
The decision did not surprise Mick Ferrari, owner of Mick's for Hair on the mall's ground floor.
"We kind of saw the handwriting on the wall," Ferrari said.
But that was not true of the less "savvy" tenants, some of whom were taken by surprise, he said.
Ferrari already has plans to move his hair salon farther north on U.S. 19 to Pinellas Park Square at 110th Avenue N. That mall, he said, has approached several of the ParkSide businesses, hoping to entice them to move there.
