Copyright The Philadelphia Inquirer
The owner of the Fashion District Philadelphia highlighted cautionary optimism about the perennially troubled Center City mall in its third quarter earnings call with investors on Tuesday. California-based Macerich is one of the largest mall owners in the country. It took full control over the property in 2020 when the company bought out its former partner PREIT after PREIT declared bankruptcy. The mall had unveiled an expensive redevelopment at the worst possible time: in late 2019, just before the pandemic struck. When the Philadelphia 76ers announced plans in 2022 to build a Center City arena, Macerich embraced the proposal, which would have leveled half the struggling Fashion District. “The reality is today is we’ve got available space,” their then-CEO said at the time. Macerich has largely been silent since the arena deal fell apart, although in a sign of recommitment to the property, it hired a team of retail specialists with CBRE’s Philadelphia office to attract new tenants earlier this year. “You know, on that [shopping] center, we really had our hands tied because of the arena,” Jackson Hsieh, president and CEO of Macerich, said in response to a question about redevelopment plans to attract more tenants to the Fashion District. The 76ers arena would have razed half the mall and relocated many tenants to the remaining half. But that would still have displaced some businesses, as the Fashion District was over 78% occupied at the time. “We really couldn’t do anything because [the basketball arena] was taking up such critical space,” Hsieh said. “You can imagine, you’re trying to hold tenants together that would be potentially part of where the arena would sit, and you have to move them.” Hsieh described Macerich as “finally” putting more “energy and effort” into leasing and pumping up the Fashion District’s occupancy. “I’m cautiously optimistic about some of the early momentum that we’re starting to see there,” Hsieh said. “We’re going to do our best to try to figure out how to create the right kind of…merchandising mix." Macerich does not have any debt on the Fashion District, and as of the end of last year, the shopping center was included among the 31 malls in the company’s “Go-Forward Portfolio,” which are the core properties it is still investing in. The Fashion District is still in the lowest tier of “Go Forward” properties, far from the “fortress” malls that are the heart of the company’s business in California and Arizona. But it still isn’t among the 11 properties outside that grouping, which the company is actively seeking to sell. “It’s still early days, but so far from what I’ve seen from the early parts of the feedback from the teams on our quarterly asset reviews, we are finally getting after it,” Hsieh said. He also said Macerich is closely following Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s efforts to revitalize East Market Street following the arena deal’s collapse. The first meeting of the Market East Advisory Committee, a group of dozens of stakeholders along and around the commercial corridor, was held behind closed doors Monday morning at the Convention Center. A variety of policy initiatives are being considered for the area, including zoning incentives and tax abatements. The mayor is expected to hold a news conference Friday to discuss the corridor’s future. The 76ers and Comcast are moving forward with a joint effort to demolish buildings on the 1000 block of Market Street to make way for unspecified future development. After feuding over the Center City location, the 76ers and Comcast Spectacor, which owns the Flyers, came together and decided to build a new arena in the South Philadelphia sports complex. But Comcast and the Sixers also committed to developing real estate along the beleaguered Market East corridor at the behest of Parker, who had planned to make the new Center City Sixers arena the cornerstone of her revitalization plans. “The mayor is very focused in this area as well, and there are efforts to try to just improve the overall area that the Fashion District of Philadelphia sits in,” Hsieh said on the earnings call. “I think that we can get some help from the city in terms of what their plans are for that area to try to improve it. That might improve our prospects there.”
