Please allow me to introduce myself and hopefully clarify what has been happening with Lake Square Mall. I am the new mall manager. I was born and raised here and this is my home. I went to Tavares Elementary, Middle and High Schools. Ive been at the mall for 14 years in the capacity of Office Administrator and only became the manager after our transition in March. We are now owned by Lake Square Mall Realty Management, LLC, Our owner is an investor based in New York. He bid on the mall at auction in November and won the bid at $13.6 million. The closing was March 18th. We transitioned directly from Macerich Properties to our new owner. He owns 18 malls. Since the transition, our new owner has made it much easier to lease space in the mall and weve had 6 or 7 new leases. Icheban opened up where Barnhills was, Dunkin Donuts where KFC was and in the mall, we have Cuba Pichys where Garfields was, Boba Smoothies, Fantastic Finds furniture store, Mammas Pizza, Patsys Steaks and Dogs, and I currently have 6 active prospects. Most of these are not nationals, however, as we begin filling these vacancies, we will become more attractive to the nationals. We do not own Target. Target has owned their own property, building and parking lot since they were built. I communicate regularly with the real estate agent handling the sale of Target. I cant comment on anyone who is interested until deals are signed. We are actively working on filling the J.C. Penney location and our new owner is working with a national leasing company to handle deals with national brands. We have an events coordinator who is working diligently to bring events into the mall. Her name is Heather Reitz. She has been working on a deal with an organization who will begin holding a classic car show and much more as a monthly event in the parking lot with incentives to push that traffic into the mall as well. We are working on many other event ideas, both inside the mall and outside. I have been working with the City on lowering electric deposits for new tenants coming into the mall, in order to boost business development in the mall. All City Commissioners voted unanimously at last Monday Nights Commission meeting to do away with all deposits for new tenants for three years. This is a tremendous help and I must commend City Manager Al Minner and Chamber Director Sandi Moore for jumping on board and helping push this. You may have noticed recently cranes lowering A/C units onto the roof and roofing companies laying new roof in various areas of the mall. In short, there is so much positive activity going on here at Lake Square that I know the majority of the community has not been aware of. Do we have a lot of work ahead of us? We sure do but its happening. I welcome and look forward to hearing any and all comments and suggestions from the community. I feel we have great potential here and Im excited to see what our future holds. Thank you!
Posted on: Thu, 07 Aug 2014 21:21:02 +0000
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