Officials view deal as positive for city By Greg Avery
Camera Staff Writer
Boulder officials reacted positively Friday to news that Macerich Co., the primary owner of Crossroads Mall, will buy the company that built Broomfield's FlatIron Crossing.
Owning both malls could put Macerich in better shape to lure tenants to Boulder's beleaguered shopping center, they said, and the buyout could increase the company's willingness to transform Crossroads into something other than a traditional mall.
Macerich could find ways to make Crossroads Mall and FlatIron Crossing complement each other, making it easier to sign tenants to fill the Boulder center that currently is more than half empty, said Richard Wobbekind, an associate dean at the University of Colorado's Leeds School of Business and a member of the Boulder Urban Renewal Authority Board.
The urban renewal authority is overseeing a proposed deal with Macerich Co. that could see the mall transformed into an "urban village," a mixture of shops, restaurants apartments and plazas built around a new grid of streets and pedestrian trails.
Last month, the city signaled it would consider sharing up to $80 million of city sales taxes with the company over the next 25 years if Macerich successfully re-energized the shopping area and built public amenities on the 60-acre property.
Owning FlatIron Crossing might give Macerich more latitude to find stores willing to participate in the kind of Crossroads Mall redevelopment the city wants, Wobbekind said.
But when Macerich's purchase of the Westcor Limited Realty Partnership is completed, the same basic situation between the company and the city exists, said Brad Power, executive director of the urban renewal authority.
Still, Power said he saw more positives than negatives to Macerich owning both malls.
"If these two were going to continue to compete against one another, then clearly we'd have been in trouble," Power said.
With the addition of Westcor to Macerich's portfolio, the potential exists for Crossroads to drop further down Macerich's priority list, officials admitted.
Some, like Councilman Don Mock, have said they worry that Macerich has already been dragging its feet in redeveloping the site, possibly in hopes of getting a city subsidy to help with the project.
However, Wobbekind said, it's unlikely that the publicly traded Macerich Co. would let Boulder's former premier shopping center languish for long.
"I can't imagine that they'd want to see their investment decline forever," Wobbekind said.
Contact Greg Avery at (303) 473-1307 or averyg@thedailycamera.com.
June 1, 2002
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