ANAHEIM : Residents Seek to Help Mall’s Image

The Anaheim Plaza may not have many customers, but it does have some friends who are fighting to liven it up.

A group of 12 nearby residents have formed a group called Residents for Anaheim Plaza, which will examine ways to improve the dowdy image of the county’s weakest shopping center. More than 350 people who live near the plaza showed up this week for the group’s first open meeting.

One of the organization’s top goals is to convince the plaza’s management company, O’Connor Group, and its owner, the State Teachers Retirement System, not to accede to suggestions that the shopping center should be converted into a discount mall, leaders said. Of the plaza’s 71 stores, 30 are vacant.

The group wants O’Connor to seek a major quality retailer to move into one of the plaza’s three anchor stores, which has been vacant since Robinson’s moved out in 1987. The other anchor stores are operated by the Broadway and Mervyn’s Department Store.

“This group will be a vehicle for the community to tell the plaza what they want to see there and allow the management to communicate back to the community,” said Lew Overholt, an attorney who lives near the plaza and is one of the group’s leaders. “The bottom line is that this is the only shopping center of its kind we have in our city, and we want to keep it.”

Jan Wohlwend, the plaza’s general manager, said she is supportive of the group’s efforts.

“With their input we will be better off because it is very important that we hear what our neighbors have to say,” she said.

According to the latest report from the State Board of Equalization, taxable sales at Anaheim Plaza dropped 10%, to $51 million, in 1990 compared to the previous year and down nearly 40% from 1986, when taxable sales totaled $84 million. Only The City Shopping Center in Orange had comparably weak sales in 1990 among county shopping centers, with taxable sales of $78 million. The county’s other malls had sales that were two to 14 times larger.

Anaheim Plaza was plagued in the 1980s by slumping sales, which analysts had attributed to a need to modernize the drab facility and from competition from new malls in Brea and Santa Ana.

A recently released study commissioned by the city’s Redevelopment Agency suggested returning the plaza to an open-air center by taking off its roof, which was added in 1972.

Others have suggested that the plaza be converted into an outlet mall, where chain stores and manufacturers would sell seconds and discontinued lines.

“Consultants have said that the plaza needs to become ‘value-oriented,’ but we don’t understand why we can’t have quality,” Overholt said. “We have had quality in the past and we can have quality in the future.”