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 [转帖]San Francisco：明天bloomingdale正式开张，300家店，S.F最大的mall |
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天蝎座的
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作者：天蝎座的 在 海归茶馆 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
.F. mall would be biggest in West
Bloomingdale's brings in neighbor on project for Emporium site
Dan Levy, Chronicle Staff Writer Friday, February 7, 2003
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(02-07) 04:00 PDT San Francisco -- In a crucial boost to the long-stalled Bloomingdale's complex in downtown San Francisco, the developer of the project has signed on the owner of the adjacent San Francisco Centre to shoulder a key role in financing and operations.
The agreement gives the developers the financial muscle they hope will finally get the $380 million project, on the site of the old Emporium store on Market Street, off the ground. The Bloomingdale's plan, which has secured all the necessary city approvals, has been languishing for more than six years because of political opposition, lawsuits and a sagging Bay Area economy.
Forest City California, the original developer of the proposed complex, announced Thursday that it has taken on Westfield America as a partner.
The partnership now will take its deal to the San Francisco Redevelopment Commission for approval -- the last step before groundbreaking.
"We have every reason to believe it will be approved," said Bill Carney, deputy director of the Redevelopment Agency, at the San Francisco Centre with Mayor Willie Brown and business leaders for the announcement of the partnership.
If the commission approves the deal, construction will start in September, officials from both companies said. The complex would open in summer or fall of 2006.
The Bloomingdale's plan has faced many hurdles, including charges that it would destroy a historic civic landmark and that Brown was too close to Forest City officials.
After the developer won a lawsuit by preservationists last year and weathered political attacks about cronyism, the Bay Area economy soured. It has been difficult to find tenants for a huge retail project while retail vacancies hit record highs in Union Square.
But with Westfield America on board as an equity partner with Forest City to spread the financial risk, the planned behemoth at the old Emporium building finally appears to be on track for a groundbreaking.
"The economy at the moment obviously isn't the best it's ever been, but now we have the combined capacity of two real estate companies," said James Ratner,
president of Forest City, which has been trying to develop the Market Street site for years. "Two separate centers will be joined in one major center. It's a unique situation. There's nothing like this anywhere in the U.S."
The project is at the intersection of the Municipal Railway and BART lines. It also sits between Union Square and Yerba Buena Gardens, a delight to urban planners looking to stitch those districts together.
The developers plan to combine the two malls into a single operation that they say would be one of the largest urban shopping complexes west of the Mississippi: 1.5 million square feet, including the second-largest store in the Bloomingdale's chain.
"It will be great shopping and great fun," said Brown, telling the crowd Thursday that it's easier to find matching ties and shoes when you're shopping under one roof.
For shoppers, the new partnership between Forest City and Westfield simply means they will be able to walk between the two large complexes instead of exiting one and entering the other separately.
On Thursday, Ratner, Westfield chief executive Peter Lowy and Brown walked through a symbolic red door on the ground floor of the San Francisco Centre near the Nordstrom elevators to show how the flow would work.
When construction is completed in 2006, the connection would be five stories high between San Francisco Centre and the old Emporium structure, according to project designs.
In financial terms, the big winner in the deal appears to be Westfield, one of the biggest and most aggressive mall operators in the country.
The company, based in Australia and nearly twice as large as Forest City with about $10.2 billion in assets, would get an equity stake in a lucrative development that until now has been the exclusive domain of Forest City.
Westfield would control both the retail and office leasing in the project. The company also would receive a hefty management fee for the work.
"It's true that we're helping to get the momentum moving toward a start," Lowy said. "Having come together (with Forest City), we're going to make both of us better."
LOGICAL OPERATION
Retail experts said the partnership seems to make sense on an operational level.
"Westfield is one of the largest shopping center owners in California, while Forest City doesn't have anything right here," said Kazuko Morgan of Cushman & Wakefield in San Francisco. "Westfield already has relationships with tenants in California. They know their market. Why compete with them?"
The Forest City Bloomingdale's plan has been floating around since 1996, after the Emporium closed the historic downtown building, between Fourth and Fifth streets, that dates back to the 1890s.
The project, touted as an economic engine that will provide the city with thousands of jobs and million of dollars in tax revenues, has always included huge amounts of upscale retail space, restaurants, food markets, office space and movie theaters.
But some community groups have fought the Forest City plan on historic preservation grounds, and political critics have said that Forest City officials are too close to Brown.
Last month, a luxury hotel tower that had been added to the proposal during the dot-com boom was eliminated because financing could not be found.
ROUGH GOING FOR A WHILE
The many difficulties over the years led even the strongest Bloomingdale's proponents to wonder whether the project would ever get built.
"There were times when I thought, how can Forest City hold on?" said Carolyn Diamond, head of the Market Street Association, a merchant group that supports the plan. "Now they have a partner that anchors the deal."
The old Emporium site, with its 19th century facade and ornate rotunda, both of which will be incorporated in the new project, is actually owned by Federated Stores, the giant retailer that runs the Bloomingdale's chain.
But the cost of holding the land -- taxes, insurance and maintenance -- has been borne by Forest City in anticipation of a successful development.
作者：天蝎座的 在 海归茶馆 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
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 [转帖]San Francisco：明天bloomingdale正式开张，300家店，S.F最大的mall -- 天蝎座的 - (6659 Byte) 2006-9-28 周四, 08:40 (1284 reads)
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