{"id":4350,"date":"2008-04-03T19:07:00","date_gmt":"2008-04-03T19:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=4350"},"modified":"2017-11-12T06:17:46","modified_gmt":"2017-11-12T12:17:46","slug":"crestwood-mall-to-become-land-boondoggle-to-benefit-private-developer-at-expense-of-taxpayer-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2008\/04\/03\/crestwood-mall-to-become-land-boondoggle-to-benefit-private-developer-at-expense-of-taxpayer-money\/","title":{"rendered":"Crestwood Mall To Become Land Boondoggle To Benefit Private Developer At Expense Of Taxpayer Money"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well, the actual headline is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stltoday.com\/stltoday\/business\/stories.nsf\/story\/7340F6AD2452E793862574200008D7E0?OpenDocument\" target=\"_blank\">Crestwood mall to become open-air lifestyle center<\/a>, but it looks to be another case of a mechanism to support the risk-free lifestyle large land developers enjoy in the 21st century:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Crestwood Plaza will be at least partially demolished and transformed into an open air lifestyle center, according to one of its new owners, Chicago-based Centrum Properties.<\/p>\n<p>Centrum along with New York investment advisor Angelo, Gordon &#038; Co purchased the 48-acre mall from Australian shopping-mall giant Westfield Group for an undisclosed sum. Westfield bought the mall, built in 1957, for $106.4 million in 1998.<\/p>\n<p>The deal, reported first in the Post-Dispatch by columnist Joe Whittington two months ago, closed on March 26. The mall has been temporarily renamed Crestwood Court.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It had not been aggressively managed for years,&#8221; said Sol Barket, Centrum&#8217;s managing partner of retail development. &#8220;We saw it as a great opportunity to create an open air lifestyle center.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>A great opportunity to soak the taxpayers of another state, you mean.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;We will also require subsidies from the city of Crestwood,&#8221; he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Of course.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The sale came as the mall&#8217;s future was hanging in doubt. A number of retailers have pulled out of the center, including anchor retailer Dillard&#8217;s Inc., which closed in October. Crestwood has two other anchors, Sears and Macy&#8217;s.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>You know why the future was in the balance and why traffic dwindled and whatnot?  Partly, because businesses couldn&#8217;t prognosticate what sort of cockamamie plan the city would come up with and get suckered into.  Well, there it is.<\/p>\n<p>Money paid to developers, or money not collected from developers.  Meanwhile, watch your ballots for incremental tax increases to fund basic services that will suffer from a mysterious problem in lack of funds from existing sources.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, the actual headline is Crestwood mall to become open-air lifestyle center, but it looks to be another case of a mechanism to support the risk-free lifestyle large land developers enjoy in the 21st century: Crestwood Plaza will be at least partially demolished and transformed into an open air lifestyle center, according to one of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4350"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17539,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4350\/revisions\/17539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}