El Con is being "de-malled."
The owners of Tucson's first mall, on East Broadway near Alvernon Way, will soon hire a demolition crew to tear down the shell of the enclosed mall, said Susan Allen, an El Con spokeswoman. In preparation, the last three tenants in the mall's lonely interior - a barber, a cobbler and a poster store - have been told to move.
Details about what the planned open-air shopping center will eventually look like are sketchy. But the current mall's anchor tenants - Century 20 El Con Theatres, The Home Depot, Target, Burlington Coat Factory, Ross Dress For Less and J.C. Penney - will all remain, with J.C. Penney getting better exposure to Broadway, Allen said.
A timeline isn't yet set, and demolition will be a lengthy process, Allen said. So far, the only tear-down permit the mall has sought is for a building on its west end formerly occupied by Macy's, said Glenn Moyer of the city's Planning and Development Services Department. Walmart has already announced plans to open in that location.
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"We knew this was coming," said Tom Fetter, manager of The Poster Warehouse, one of the last tenants of the mall's interior. "You can put two and two together when they have architects running around. You gotta figure they're gonna tear it down."
Even so, Fetter said he and the other longtime tenants held out hope that ownership would find a way to make an indoor mall at El Con relevant again.
"I think that was everybody's hope," he said. "It's a shame they let the mall go the way they did. It had a lot of potential."
Fetter said The Poster Warehouse, which has been inside the mall for 19 years, will move to a new location, probably on Broadway, by this summer.
El Con Custom Cobblers and El Continental Barber Shop, which have been at the mall since the 1960s, are moving on as well.
Fetter said he doesn't think an outdoor shopping area can replace what the indoor mall could have offered.
"A bunch of stand-alone big boxes? That doesn't seem that attractive to me," he said.
But Greg Furrier, a retail broker with Picor Commercial Real Estate Services, said the change is overdue.
For years, El Con has struggled with vacancies. With Tucson Mall on the northwest side and Park Place on the east side, it didn't make sense for many retailers to look at the midtown El Con, Furrier said. The mall, which is owned locally by the Kivel and Papanikolas families, also struggled to compete with national mall owner General Growth Properties Inc., which could bargain several leases at once with a retailer. General Growth owns both Park Place and Tucson Mall.
El Con will likely see more success if it sheds its image as a regular mall, Furrier said. "They're making it into a power center, and that makes a lot of sense," he said.
The location has significant crosstown traffic on both Alvernon and Broadway, which works in its favor, Furrier said. But the shopping center could still face challenges finding midsized retailers that don't already have locations nearby, Furrier said.
City Councilman Steve Kozachik, whose Ward 6 contains El Con Mall, said he thinks the plan could be very good for the area, opening new possibilities for the property.
"I think it's positive," he said. "They've been moving in this direction for a long time. This is not a knee-jerk decision they're making."
Any open-air shopping area that replaces the mall should be a community gathering place as well as shopping destination, Kozachik said.
"When I moved to Tucson, El Con Mall was the mall. It was the place you went, not only for retail activities, but family activities," he said. "I'd like to see the mall get back into the mode of having fairs and other things, trying to draw people into the area."
With its central location and proximity to Reid Park, whatever replaces El Con Mall can be successful, he said.
"If they take advantage of the surrounding areas and events, we can create some win-wins," he said.
Changes at the mall have been a sore spot with neighbors in recent years, with many angry that Walmart will be open 24 hours a day.
The plan to tear down the shell of the mall, though, is less controversial, said Uwe Fink, who represents El Montevideo Neighborhood on a committee to discuss mall issues that includes community members, city officials and El Con representatives.
"I don't think it has any adverse effects," Fink said, "so nobody objected to that."
El Con history
Construction on El Con Mall began in 1959 adjacent to the El Conquistador resort hotel. At first developers said it would be integrated into the shopping center, but in the mid-1960s the hotel was closed and demolished.
A piece of a mall
If you're dying to get your hands on a piece of the old Levy's department store - or another chunk of El Con Mall - you're going to have to wait awhile.
Mall owners plan to hire an auction company to sell off large pots, wooden benches, sign holders and other items. But when it comes to parts of the actual building, the mall first must make sure asbestos in the structure won't pose any health threats.
The auction will take place at El Con, but a date isn't yet set.
Contact reporter Dale Quinn at dquinn@azstarnet.com or 573-4197. Contact reporter Alex Dalenberg at adalenberg@azstarnet.com or 807-8429.
