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Thirty years after it added a second level, the mall next to Interstate 10 is about to reinvent itself again. No plans have been submitted, but city officials say major changes are imminent.
Myrtle Smith is a member of the Montclair Walkers, a group of seniors who walk the Montclair Plaza on weekday mornings, after the front doors open but before shoppers start to arrive.
Like her fellow walkers, Smith has heard rumors about the mall getting a major overhaul, maybe starting within two months. Nothing is official, but should that happen Smith would be all for it.
“I definitely think they need to do something,” said Smith, a Montclair resident who turned 75 last week. “It was one of the first malls built anywhere, and I would hate to see it go away. I hear they’re going to try to make it more like Victoria Gardens. I don’t know if that would work, but I know they have to do something.”
While it’s not falling apart – no one would mistake it for the Carousel Mall in San Bernardino or Riverside Plaza before it was leveled and made into an outdoor facility – the mall at Central Avenue next to Interstate 10 has seen better days.
Some prime retail space on both levels sits empty, and the tenant mix – even with Nordstrom as a one its anchor tenants – doesn’t generate the buzz that is felt at a place like Victoria Gardens in Rancho Cucamonga or Galleria at Tyler in Riverside, both of which are thriving.
The mall’s owner, CIM Group in Los Angeles, has a record of reviving retail properties, and it has vowed to make Montclair Plaza a popular destination. The question is what is it going to do, and on what schedule?
Montclair Plaza General Manager Larry Martin, along with CIM Group officials, both declined to discuss possible renovations to Montclair Plaza. But at a recent council meeting, City Manager Edward C. Starr indicated what is likely in store for the mall: demolishing the vacant anchor tenant building at the mall’s east end, bringing high-end and outdoor shopping to its west end and developing a multiplex, possibly with as many as 16 screens.
Starr also promised multiple interior changes to the property at 5060 E. Montclair Plaza Lane, including moving the food court to the mall’s east end and installing a lifestyle center, but he said the plaza’s interior section will essentially remain in place.
“They bought the mall with the idea of remodeling it, so there’s no question they’re going to do something,” Starr said of CIM Group. “I think they want to make changes so they can market to a different clientele, maybe one that’s a little more affluent than what we have now.”
Starr emphasized that all of those ideas are preliminary and that the city has yet to see a proposal, much less vote on anything.
Montclair Plaza isn’t the only shopping mall in need of an overhaul to stay competitive.
More than two dozen malls throughout the United States have shut down during the last four years, and another 60 are considered “on the brink of death,” according to a January story in Business Insider.
That report cited a prediction by Green Street Advisors, a real estate analytics firm in Newport Beach, that about 15 percent of all malls in the United States will either fail or be converted to non-retail space within the next 15 years.
Of the country’s 1,200 shopping malls, 80 percent are considered healthy, meaning they have a vacancy rate of 10 percent or less. That was down from 94 percent in 2006, according to Business Insider.
Whatever plans it settles on for Montclair Plaza, CIM Group must take action and it must do so quickly, said one local real estate broker familiar with the property.
“It’s tired,” Fred Encinas, senior vice president and a retail specialist with NAI Capital Ontario said of the Montclair Plaza. “It definitely needs a revitalization of some kind. But CIM Group is a smart company, they’re well-invested and it looks like they have a plan.”
Restoration of the mall probably should begin with its exterior, said Encinas, who has been working real estate transactions in the Inland Empire for 30 years.
Most malls today advertise their tenants prominently on the outside, and design the building so that some tenants near the major entrances can be seen from a distance.
Not so the Montclair Plaza. Except few wall signs on the outside of its anchor tenants, it offers no hint of its tenant mix to anyone entering the property from Moreno Street, which fronts the mall. On the back of the mall, facing Interstate 10, Barnes & Noble bookstore is probably the most visible property.
“Montclair Plaza has had its share of remodeling and improvements over the years, but they did all of the work on the inside,” Encinas said. “They have to work on the outside.”
When it opened in 1968, Montclair Plaza was a single-story facility with a small food court inside the front door and a Pickwick Bookstore, which was part of the B. Dalton chain, around the corner. The second level was added in 1985, and the mall underwent major inside renovations in 2008.
For years, Montclair Plaza thrived, in part because it was the largest retail operation of its kind east of Pomona.
While there’s no way to prove it definitively, Montclair Plaza undoubtedly played a role in the demise of the Pomona Mall, the venerable outdoor shopping center that fell out favor in the early to mid-1970s and is still trying to remake itself.
Competition from Victoria Gardens and the Chino Spectrum Marketplace, along with the recession, put a dent into Montclair Plaza, Starr said.
“Consumers haven’t returned to the shopping malls since the recession ended, and it seems like San Bernardino County has been slow to recover from the recession, so maybe it’s been tougher here,” Starr said. ‘It’s important that we get the Montclair Plaza fixed, because it’s still a major part of the community. We need to get it back to being a complete mall.”
