Commissioner Wants City To Help Southgate Mall

Commissioner Shannon Snyder wants to make sure the Westfield Southgate Mall doesn’t become barren or cheapened after a planned departure.

Snyder proposed to the commission Monday that the commission ought to discuss the mall at some point to help it transition.

“I don’t have an answer. I would just like to bring it to the commission’s attention so that we can focus on it before it deteriorates into a tournament of glow-in-the-dark goofy golf like they have down in for a while,” Snyder said, referencing Westfield’s other property where it has Lunar Mini Golf where Steve and Berry’s once was and also has a in another wing of the mall.

“I don’t know what the answer is, but I don’t think this was the biggest unkept secret in Sarasota in the last year, year-and-a-half that this is what was going on,” he continued.

The comments come amid reports that in addition to Saks Fifth leaving the mall for the , several stores could exercise an option to leave if they have a co-tenancy lease that allows them to pack up shop if a certain anchor leaves, The Herald-Tribune reports.

The report speculated that stores such as , , and could have such an agreement, but each of those companies did not confirm their situations and Westfield does not discuss their lease arrangements with the media.

But one player in the mall business did receive a call from those stores, The Herald-Tribune reports: 

"By lunchtime Wednesday, commercial real estate broker Barry Seidel had fielded calls from four worried Southgate retailers.

All fretted over their future, after learning that Saks intends to move in 2014 to a new, much larger store at the planned Mall at University Town Center.

"They were nervous about it," said Seidel, owner of American Property Group of Sarasota Inc."

Snyder said the commission has to be cognizant of the mall’s future.

“It’s a private industry, but it’s a large section of our tax base,” Snyder said. “We’re going to have some dramatic changes in the next couple of years.”