Some local shoppers got a bit excited when CenterCal Properties  posted a site plan on its Web site that named tenants for vacant spaces at the Valley Mall.
Too bad it’s the wrong one.
When I reached Fred Bruning, president of the Portland-area CenterCal, about the site plan, he mentioned that the document was a working one and was completely inaccurate at this point. (They have since taken the site plan off the Web site.) 
Bruning, however, did give me some tidbits of interest:

• Forever 21 will not go into Gottschalks. Turns out that Forever 21, for those first few months, was working with the bankruptcy trustee for Gottschalks, not CenterCal. A few weeks after it won the lease for the Valley Mall, along with several other stores, it decided to not to go through with the deal and a bankruptcy judge ultimately terminated the lease.
Once Forever 21 was no longer had a hold on the lease, CenterCal could contact other prospective tenants for the space. At this point, they’re working to get a letter of intent from a department store.
But what about those lease negotiations? Forever 21 did talk to CenterCal about the possibility of opening elsewhere in the mall, but those discussions have been quiet for the last few weeks, Bruning said.

• Best Buy will not be going into the Linens ‘n Things space.
Bruning said CenterCal was close on getting a deal with the Minneapolis-area electronic store chain, but the deal went cold at the last minute.
Instead, another kitchen store chain will go in its place. He wouldn’t provide a name, but said that he expects a building permit application to show up in Union Gap’s planning department in the next 30 days.
“It’s better to bring a new tenant to a (local) market, then to make a vacancy for someone else,” he said.

• Expect new store announcements for both the Valley Mall and the Valley Mall Plaza to come just in time for the holidays. Bruning notes that it seem retailers were not doing much as they struggled through the national recession, which explain the lack of activity at the local level. 
“We went through the worse retail recession in 40 years in the last 18 months,” he said.
But now some retailers seem ready to expand again, he said. He’s has a few potential apparel and restaurant tenants for spaces vacated by Rex TV & Appliance  and Corral West Ranchwear.

• One potential tenant for the mall is a restaurant concept from Matthew Silverman, who is known in culinary circles for being the youngest person named as an executive chef at restaurants run by food personality Wolfgang Puck.
“It’s something different from the Olive Gardens and Red Robins in the area,” Bruning said.
Seems far fetched? Turns out that Bruning recently worked with Silverman earlier this year to open three restaurants at Blackhawk Plaza, another CenterCal property in Danville, Calif.

Some interesting developments, eh? The retail world can change quite quickly. I’ll keep you updated.

Reach blogger Mai Hoang at mhoang@yakimaherald.com or by commenting on this entry.
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