Vallco is closing. There isn’t much we can do about it, but according to the buyers, there also isn’t much to oppose.
Sand Hill Property Company bought the three anchor stores of Vallco — Macy’s, JCPenney, and Sears — for $200 million in Oct. 2014 and had bought the entire mall by Nov. 2014.
The company never considered remodeling or rebranding the mall, because they know that doing so would be even more expensive and most likely unsuccessful.
“We didn’t buy the mall to improve it, because there is simply no feasible solution to reinvent the mall,” manager of the project at Sand Hill, Reed Moulds, said.
Macy’s recently decided to shut down its store in the mall and instead open a Bloomingdale’s in Valley Fair, a much more successful mall located in Santa Clara. As of now, the company plans to create a downtown Cupertino, similar to Santana Row in San Jose.
“Right now, Vallco is dead in the sense that there’s never much to do,” Moulds said. “We want to create a vibrant atmosphere where there is always something exciting going on, motivating customers to keep coming back for more.”
Before creating blueprints or planning the redevelopment, Cupertino’s City Council required that the company work with the city’s residents. Essentially, it must conduct community outreach over the next few months and then present a plan incorporating public input to City Council.
“Our biggest concern would be to not hear about any opposition due to a lack of communication,” Moulds said. “We want residents to be as involved in the early stages as possible.”
Although they plan to begin outreach soon, Sand Hill has already begun preparing ways to get public support and appease the opposition. Knowing that many people, especially teenagers, are against removing AMC, the movie theater at Vallco, the company has decided to keep the theater, amidst all the other redevelopments, due to the decades-long lease it made with the mall. It will most likely build a new theater for AMC to relocate into before closing the existing one. As for other stores with leases, Sand Hill plans to work with its current successful tenants to retain them and make them an integral part of a revitalized Vallco.
“We want to work with the opinions and create a net positive instead of simply eliminating the concern,” Moulds said.
As for the worry that local public schools will become overcrowded following the addition of roughly 400 housing units, the property business recognizes the validity of the concern. Instead of ignoring it, the company hopes to not just offset the negative effects, but to go beyond that and make Cupertino a better place for students, schools, and parents, with the help of the project. The buyers intend to do this in terms of tax revenue, improving and expanding school facilities and partnering with the school districts.
For Sand Hill and Moulds, the key to their project is outreach and interaction within the community. Because the success of the project depends entirely on the community and whether or not they like the changes, the company aims to keep residents posted every step of the way. They will do this by opening an office at the mall for people to come in, ask questions and give input. In addition, they have already begun a comprehensive community outreach process that includes focus groups, community surveys, community workshops and many other venues for public input. The company is reaching out to all residents of Cupertino and is engaging the entire community, including residents with concerns, to get ideas and input about how they want to see Vallco revitalized.
“Without the trust of the local community, our project won’t work,” Moulds said.
The ambitious buyers know they cannot please everyone, but they hope that the city realizes that this is for the greater good of the entire community and that they will get out of the project what they put into it.
According to the buyers, their redevelopment plan will benefit Cupertino and impact the city in nothing but a positive way. They speculate that their improvements will result in more jobs, more sales tax revenue, more shopping and dining variety and public spaces available for Cupertino’s residents.
“Above all, we want to produce something that the community will look back on with satisfaction and pride,” Moulds said.
Click here to read about the community’s perspective on this issue.
Story written and reported by Elia Chen and Sanjana Murthy.
