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BOULDER - Shopping mall developer Westcor will unveil in April a preliminary plan to inject new life into the ailing Crossroads Mall in Boulder.
Westcor, a subsidiary of The Macerich Company, owner of the mall, will present a draft plan during an April 23 pre-application meeting with city of Boulder officials.
Dave Scholl, senior vice president of development for Phoenixbased Westcor, which developed FlatIron Crossing mall nine miles away in Broomfield, sat down with The Boulder County Business Report March 6 to discuss a timeline for rejuvenating the mall, a task that finally collapsed last year when the city and Macerich failed to agree on redevelopment plans and terms of financial incentives.
Santa Monica, Calif.-based Macerich bought Westcor last year and assigned the job of fixing Crossroads to Scholl and his team.
For the past few months Westcor has been gathering information on the demand of consumers and tenants. Scholl said that information would drive the merchandise mix of the mall and be the basis for a plan he hopes will meet with quick approval.
"This town does not need to be whipsawed around another time about what is going to happen and what isn't going to happen," he said. "We will come to a conclusion about what is it the consumer wants in Boulder, which tenants want to locate in this project, and how we take this mixture of tenants and properly merchandise them in to a number of different venues inside this 70-acre square.
"I will be building our pro forma to make sure financially what we are trying to achieve makes sense for our company.'
Here are some excerpts from that March 6 interview:
Scholl: The last couple of months, from most of the articles I've read, I get a tremendous sense of people asking, "What's going on? What is Westcor doing? I haven't heard anything."
We owe a response to that. We have tried to stay off the radar screen. But we have been working with city staff since November. We took the first five months to give ourselves a quick education. We are an entirely new team. Art Coppola (president of Macerich) said, "I'd love for...