Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 7, Issue 3, March 2003

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Siding with the Mayor

Developers dislike plan

The Northgate Mall owners' efforts to convince the City to lift its General Development Plan guidelines for expanding the mall has drawn strong support from several local business owners and real estate developers.

"We can't afford to lose our tax base at Northgate," said Aurora Avenue Merchants Association director Faye Garneau at a recent meeting of the Northgate Chamber of Commerce. She said the public needs to understand that developers don't build projects "out of the kindness of our hearts. We do it because we want to build a nice building, and because we believe we'll get a return on our investment."

Overly burdensome land use restrictions can cause developers to bail out on doing new projects.

Sy Iffert, a commercial property owner in the Northgate area, concurs. "If Northgate (Mall) develops, it's for the community. I think that point gets lost."

Iffert, who also spoke at the Northgate Chamber meeting, praised Mayor Greg Nickels for his willingness to broker a deal with Simon that would exempt the mall from the GDP.

"I certainly commend the mayor for being forceful and doing something about Northgate," he said.

Shopping mall expert Richard Muhlebach of Kennedy-Wilson Properties Northwest, has written articles and books on the history of shopping centers in the U.S. He has been following Simon's ongoing struggles to expand the mall with keen interest.

He notes that Northgate Mall's claim of being America's first modern mall is true, in the sense that, while it wasn't the first shopping center, it was the first actual mall to have two facing rows of shops with a pedestrian walkway in the middle.

A national trade magazine called Shopping Center World backs up Muhlebach's assessment, calling Northgate "the first open-air pedestrian mall." (The mall was later covered with a roof in the 1960s and fully enclosed in the 1970s.)

Muhlebach said Northgate has a "phenomenal location," with excellent visibility and easy freeway access. It also serves an area that is densely populated and with demographics that are extremely desirable to retailers. But to take advantage of those strengths, and to keep pace with competing area malls, Northgate needs to be renovated in a way that goes beyond just a paint job and new signage.

"Ironically, expansion of Northgate Mall, in my opinion, is not going to pull people away from Alderwood or Bellevue Square," Muhlebach said. "It's just going to do a better job of serving the immediate community."

In addition to increasing the square footage of the mall, Northgate needs to focus on improving its tenant mix, he said. "But to do that, you've got to go through a major renovation."

Without that, the mall runs the risk of seeing potential customers who live in the Northgate area make the longer drives to Lynnwood and Bellevue for their shopping needs.

Muhlebach believes Seattle city officials "need to have the courage to make the right decision" by letting Simon expand the mall. By doing so, "I bet Northgate would create 300 new jobs," he said.