American Mall workers still waiting for word

LIMA - With one of its largest tenants gone and another on the way out the door, the remaining renters at the American Mall are wondering what the future holds.

Owners of Buffalo Wild Wings announced Monday they plan to leave their American Mall location and build a new $1.5 million, 60,000-square-foot facility on Allentown Road. They hope to be in the new store by the end of the year. That announcement comes just months after the closing of Value City, which shut its doors in May after 25 years in the mall.

That leaves just one large store, The Andersons at the mall's west end. Earlier this month, General Manager Tom Keller said the store has no plans to move.

At the other end of the mall, on the other side of a wall erected last year to block off the unused two-thirds of the building, a half-dozen small stores do business. Owners and employees in those stores say they catch bits of rumor, but have no idea what the future holds.

"You hear things, but nobody has really said anything solid. We don't really know what's going on," said Sheila Fox, a clerk at Unique Creations, a collectables store that has been in the mall for more than a decade.

In March 2006, the mall's owner, Cafaro Co. announced plans to revitalize the property that had been its first Ohio mall. At the time, company officials said they planned to have a comprehensive plan for redeveloping the 480,000-square-foot mall by the end of 2006. They also said they were working with national retailers and restaurants on a plan to reanimate the space and were even considering a "lifestyle center" similar to Columbus' Easton Town Center.

Joe Bell, Cafaro's director of communications, said those are still the company's plans, but that the lagging economy has slowed progress.

"That's still the plan. The redevelopment of that space is still in the works, but this has been an absolutely horrible year for retailers around the country. We've seen just an incredible reticence on the part of retailers all over the place," Bell said.

"We continued to look for good tenants as we look to remerchandising the American Mall, but it's been a slower, a much slower than average, process."

Whatever happens, business people in the mall hope it will happen soon. Fox said most days are slow, and some days nobody comes in.

"We've had zero days, completely dead days. We have certain customers that maybe come in once a week or so, but, yes, we have zero days," Fox said.

There have been some hopeful signs for the mall in recent days. Earlier this summer, Happy Daz owner John Heaphy announced plans to open his second Beer Barrel restaurant in December, just east of the mall parking lot. A Rite Aid is almost completed down the street at the corner of Elm Street and Eastown Road. And local economic development leaders have great hopes for the area once work to upgrade and widen Eastown Road is done.

But future plans mean little to the mall today. By lunchtime Friday, two shoppers were in the mall, one to visit Wig City, the other, Janet Kohler, just wasting time until her movie started at the neighboring Regal Cinemas.

"It's just amazing how quiet it is. I don't know how they keep it open," Kohler said. "Maybe when everything else opens, I guess people might come over just to look around. But, if they don't do something, I think people are just going to give up."