Older centers need a face-lift

Older shopping centers that dot Huntington Beach will soon be a thing of the past if council members’ efforts to push for redeveloping or updating those centers come to fruition.

There are numerous centers in the city that are outdated and underperforming, said Councilman Don Hansen, who introduced the item at Monday’s council meeting.

The city needs to promote and generate interest in the shopping centers for long-term investment opportunities, he said.

“Some [centers] are vacant, some recently vacant, some have large unrented spaces,” Hansen said. “Even some of the new centers don’t have the traction that I thought they would have.”

Council members approved a plan Monday to develop an inventory of shopping centers in the city as well as to identify which ones would be eligible for redevelopment.

“They [shopping centers] are not dying as much as they are older centers in need of updating,” said Stanley Smalewitz, economic development director who will be overseeing the effort.

“The looks and upkeep are not as modern as the newer centers,” he said. But if a shopping center became eligible for redevelopment agency funds, the center could get help paying for tenant improvements, or for changing the tenant mix and improving its looks, Smalewitz said.

Many of the centers were built in the 1980s and would have to undergo some serious upgrades to come up to current standards, said Pat Rogers, marketing director of Bella Terra mall.

The outdoor mall, formerly the Huntington Beach Mall built in the 1950s, underwent a drastic makeover before opening last year.

Those upgrades “might be economically difficult” for older center owners to do, she said. “As a resident I think we need to find out how to make improvements without shooting ourselves in the foot.”

There are more than 25 centers scattered in the city that could use a nudge from the city, officials said. But tenants and property owners don’t want to be publicly named.

Some council members were concerned that focusing on the shopping centers would cause other projects in the pipeline — such as the Beach Boulevard and Edinger Corridor improvement studies — to slow down.

City officials will first do a survey of centers and come up with a plan to address issues, Smalewitz said. That strategic process would take at least a year or more to complete before any redevelopment takes place, he said.

The city would benefit from increased property values that would pay for the city’s police and fire departments, as well as expanding its libraries and repairing streets.

“If the centers are more attractive, the theory is more people will shop there and a certain amount of leakage to neighboring cities like Fountain Valley could be stopped,” Smalewitz said.