EDITORIAL:Triangle Square may be shaping up at last

The news that members of Costa Mesa’s business community, city leaders and probably more than a few shoppers have been waiting for finally arrived this week: Triangle Square, the city’s flagging redevelopment-area mall, has been sold.

The best part of the news? The new owners are local, replacing an outfit that was unresponsive to city requests for meetings and baffled business experts by its unwillingness to market the mall or actively seek new tenants.

“I think any change is good change,” Keith Scheinberg, co-owner of Chronic Cantina, which just moved into Triangle Square, told the Pilot. “We’ve really kind of got a momentum going, and I think that with what … we understand the new owners have planned, I think Triangle Square is going to be a real hotbed for news for the next couple years.”

Scheinberg clearly means a hotbed for good news, rather than the string of bad news that has had the mall in the public eye for years: repeated turnover of the center’s marketing department; the departure of Niketown in January 2005; Virgin Megastore’s leaving in September of that year; and finally Barnes & Noble’s packing up its books at the beginning of this year.

At times it has seemed that Sutra Lounge and the Yardhouse were the only strong businesses in the center. And it seemed only a matter of time before their owners, too, became fed up with the mismanagement and moved elsewhere.

Initial plans floating around City Hall call for adding housing units to the mall, creating yet another urban-style development in Costa Mesa. That sounds like a promising change for Triangle Square, although at this point, just about any change sounds like an improvement.

The most promising immediate change, however, is simply that the new owners are in the Newport-Mesa area. That should ensure that they are more responsive to the city, more adept at altering course if the market calls for it, and more willing to make the moves that will turn Triangle Square, finally, into a successful operation.