Article published October 27, 2005
Northwood: Woodville Mall updating gets started
By ERIKA RAY
BLADE STAFF WRITER
Improvements to the Woodville Mall in Northwood are under way, with the first phase of the proposed master plan consisting of more retail stores, a new cinema, and better access roads.
Several consultants have been working toward the renovations with the new mall owners for the last nine months, and they updated Northwood City Council at its recent committee-of-the-whole meeting with their preliminary plans.
"We've developed a conceptual master plan for large-scale development with retail office and additional residential space, as well as filling the existing Woodville Mall," said David Krone of Krone Group LLC of Cleveland. "It's a very phased and very conceptual plan."
The 800,000-square-foot mall was built in 1969 off Woodville Road about a mile east of I-280. After being renovated in 1987 and put up for sale in 1998, it was sold for $2.5 million in September to two California businessmen, Jack Kashani and Sammy Kahen, under the name Nationwide Toledo Real Estate Investment LLC.
When they purchased the mall, the new owners said efforts would be made to renovate the center and fill the empty stores. They hired Krone and have been working with local consultant Mike White, president of Bay Area Consulting of Oregon, to help find tenants and redesign and manage the mall.
The first improvement phase of the plan includes bringing a 12 to 14-screen, stadium-seating movie theater to the mall. Consultants said they're closing in on finalizing the details for that."We can almost match the entire amount of visitors at the mall just with the addition of the movie theater," Mr. Krone said.
He said he's also been working to bring more national stores to fill up the mall and said he projects it will be about 95 percent full within four years. As it exists now, about half of the mall's 100 store sites are empty.
"We feel confident that we can show the retailers that we can bring it back to life," he said.
To make the plan successful, officials have determined that it is necessary to construct an access drive to the north for Oregon and East Toledo residents to have easy access to the mall from Coy and Curtice roads.
Officials said phases could include moving the city offices from Wales Road, building a driving range, miniature golf, an indoor ice rink, and soccer field, and more shopping, baseball fields, and senior citizen living possibilities.
The first phase is expected to take three to five years to accomplish, while the entire plan is expected to take 10 to 15 years and cost "tens of millions of dollars," Mr. Krone said.
"Our long-term goal is to have this as an area of town that creates large-scale synergy," he said. "We think it's going to bring more people to live in and around Northwood. It's going to have vibrant retail in the community and it will bring an entire lifestyle component to the east side that will make it more attractive."
Councilman Dave Gallaher said there are still some questions that will have to be answered as the proposal materializes into an action plan but said he's excited about the possibilities.
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