The Village at Orange is set to undergo more than $15 million in improvements that its new owner hopes will help drive more traffic and encourage longer stays at the mall.
Vestar, which acquired the Village at Orange on undisclosed terms as part of a joint venture late last year, is working with a design firm on the improvement plans and hopes to start construction in early to mid-2015. Completion is scheduled for mid-2016.
The mall, which opened in 1971, could use some updates and other enhancements, said Jeff Axtell, Vestar’s vice president of acquisitions and development.
“The property had been operating at the same level, and we want to take it up a notch and operate it at a better level,” he added.
Village at Orange ranked No. 15 on the Business Journal’s most recent list of the largest shopping centers in Orange County, with taxable sales for the 12 months through June up 2.1% to $175.5 million.
Improvements are planned throughout the property and include parking lot landscaping, mall entrance changes and more exterior signs.
“All the different entrances to the mall we feel need to be upgraded and enhanced to give people a good feeling walking into the mall,” Axtell said. “Today, some of the entrances are just not appealing.”
Vestar also wants to make improvements to the tenant mix at the mall, which currently boasts a 95% occupancy rate for its 855,728 square feet of space.
Anchor tenants include Sears, Ross Dress for Less, Sprouts and Wal-Mart.
Specialty fashion shops at the mall include Wet Seal, Old Navy and PacSun, along with a mix of independent retailers.
The mix of tenants could change, with sporting goods or home furnishing stores among the possible additions, along with more fashion and apparel stores intended to “enhance the tenant mix and give people more reasons to shop there,” Axtell said.
New anchors would take up spaces ranging from about 10,000 to 35,000 square feet in existing parts of the mall, with no new store construction included in the improvement plans.
Instead, Axtell said, “we’ll be relocating and moving tenants around to create larger blocks of space to do these anchor stores.”
No new tenant move-ins are currently slated, according to Axtell.
Last year, 24 Hour Fitness subleased more than 54,000 square feet from Sears Holding Corp. in the mall.
Hoffman Estates, Ill.-based Sears has been looking to sublease its real estate throughout the country for the past few years as part of a larger plan to improve the business.
It lists its 249,904 square feet in the Village at Orange, and its 17,405-square-foot Sears Auto Center, which is detached from the main mall, as available for lease on a website set up to market its real estate.
Another mall anchor whose overall business has been challenged is J.C. Penney Co. The Plano, Texas-based chain said this year that it will retrench with the closure of 33 underperforming stores. None of those are in Orange County.
Vestar has not had discussions with either retailer about its longer-term plans at the mall, but “we would like to upgrade those two locations if the opportunity is available,” Axtell said.
Other areas of improvement include dining, which features a current lineup that includes Todai, Oggi’s Pizza and Brewery, and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf.
“We really feel like we need additional restaurants to give people more reasons to spend time there,” Axtell said.
