- Malls and department stores,the portrait of retail success duringthe second half of the 20th century, got killed by big box stores, the Great Recessionand the internet.
- DeSoto Square tried to adapt in the late 1990s and early 2000s, by establishing afood court and changing its tenant lineup tomore family and discount-oriented stores.
- As malls fell fromfavor with consumers, shopping centers started to cannibalize each other.
Carolyn Keller startedmoving boxesinto the DeSoto Square Mall before it even opened.
In the weeks before the mallwasformally unveiled to the public in August 1973, Keller preparedthe newest branch of Manatee Federal Savings & Loanfor aninflux of customers.
Thebank branch opened in July 1973, afew weeksbefore the mall itself, inside a space near the main entrance that would eventually become the movie theater, Keller said. It was across from Hot Sam Pretzels, Piccadilly Cafeteria and Tiffany Bakery – she still remembers the warm smell of baked goods lingering from across the way.
But that was nearly half a century ago.Before DeSoto Square Mall’s official end inApril 2021, it struggled for survival over nearly twodecades. Malls and department stores,the portrait of retail success duringthe second half of the 20th century, got killed by big box stores, the Great Recessionand the internet.
Part one:Trajectory of a mall's life: DeSoto Square Mall, once the ‘place to be’ in Manatee, fades to oblivion
Subscribers:Attorney: DeSoto Square Mall closing in Bradenton was ‘long anticipated’
DeSoto Square tried to adapt in the late 1990s and early 2000s, by establishing afood court and changing its tenant lineup tomore family and discount-oriented stores. But the shiftingretail environment, especially online, plus some strong competition from a new shopping development a few miles south finally killed it.
“The companies that were in there, one by one, started to fold up because they couldn’t compete with Amazon,” Barry Seidel, president of American Property Group of Sarasota, said.
Unprecedented challenges
As malls fell fromfavor with consumers, shopping centers started to cannibalize each other.
Besides DeSoto Square, the Sarasota-Bradenton area had Sarasota Square Mall, which opened in 1977 nearly 30 miles awayat U.S. 41 and Beneva Road, andSouth Gate Shopping Plaza, at U.S. 41 and Siesta Drive.
South Gate, whichopened in 1957as an outdoor strip center before beingfully enclosedin1988, would later be renamedSouthgate Plaza, Westfield Shoppingtown Southgate, Westfield Southgate, Westfield Siesta Key and thenthe Crossings at Siesta Key.
When it opened, it featured a Publix store, a W.T. Grant Co. junior department store and a Liggett Drug Co., according to a 1957article from the Sarasota Journal.
“The customer used to be tethered to their local mall, which in some cases was becoming increasingly shabby and poorly managed, andthe department store anchoring the mall was poorly managed andpoorly stocked, with poor service,” Mark Cohen, director of retail studies at Columbia University’s graduate school of business, said, referring to the overall stateof malls across America.“Now the handcuffs aregone, and theinternet becomes the portal for an enormous array of customers into anything and everything from anywhere.”
As online shopping grew, malls in the Sarasota-Bradenton areaand outdoor shopping areas like St. Armands Circlestarted to take a hit, Jeff Green, partner at national real estate advisoryfirm Hoffman Strategy Group, said. Suddenly, the area had more retail space than people shopping.
“Iwould have thought the Sarasota-Bradentonmarket would have been able to support two malls, but at one point there were four,” Green said. “It was an over-malled market,especially because you hadSt. Armands Circle, which was actually a strong spa lifestyle center competing with [the Crossings at Siesta Key].”
Malls tried various strategies to adapt to the evolving environment. In 2005, themarketing manager at what is now the Crossings at Siesta Keysaid publiclythat the mall was going for higher-end clientele. At the same time, its then-parent company Westfield wasn’t unaware of the broader retail trends.
In 2004, the company tried a new, personalized, hands-on service model at the Crossings at Siesta Keycalled “WOW.”Staffers provided services like meeting shoppers at their cars with wheelchairs and carrying packages out for them, as well asconcierge services like calling for dinner reservations or giving snacks to small children, according to Herald-Tribune archives.
Such efforts were among early responses bymall companies to giving customers something they couldn’t get online.
But DeSoto Square had a different reaction. In 2005, the malltried shifting to discount and service-oriented stores with more options for familiesand children.
A shuttered Gap became Simplicity, a home accessoriesstore. Bealls Home Outlet became BeallsKids Outlet. And Lucky’s Slot Machines and doll and jewelry store Tip Top popped up alongside Aeropostale, according to accounts atthe Manatee County Historical Records Library.
Wadai Abraham opened his clothing store, Street Scenes, at DeSoto Square in 2000. Back then, he said, business was good, andthe mall was almost completely occupied. At first, he said, he paidDeSoto Square $5,000 a month in rent as one of its only non-corporate retailers.
A few years later, conditions had changed. Gradually, the bigger stores left. The worst blow was in 2009 when the economy crashed, Abrahamsaid – that was whenthe Dillard’s department store announced it was leaving.
DeSoto Square was left with a lot of local stores, he said, and fewer corporate tenants.
This wasn’t an unusual situation for a mall at that time, Thomas Fisher, a professor ofdesign at the University of Minnesota, said.
Corporate chainsdominated malls in the 1970s through the 1990s, driving out smaller, local businesses because of their ability to pay higher rents, Fisher said. But these national chainshad no allegiance to the malls – they would quicklyrelocate to a more strategic area based on store performance, leaving the shopping centerin a difficult position.
“The national chains can decide a certain mall isn’t producing enough profit, so they close the store, which is a little different than if you’re a local business owner who has a kind of commitment to the location,” he said.
Despite DeSoto Square’s continued downward spiral, Street Scenes stuck it out. Customers knew where it was, and would come to the mall just to shop there. That, plus dirt-cheap rent of $1,500 a month for a 5,000-square-foot locationwas enough to keep Street Scenesat DeSoto Square through the end.
“You can’t get that rate in a plaza right now,” Abraham said of his rationale. “You’re lucky to get 1,000 square feet for that price.”
At the same time, Abraham could see the future.
“We knew there was going to be an end, we just didn’t know when it was going to happen,” hesaid.
The big killer
In a country already flooded with an excess of retail square footage, the last thingyou’d need, one might think, is another shopping center. But that’s not how Benderson Development Co. saw it.
Benderson, based in Manatee County, saw an opportunity right on the Sarasota-Manateeborder west of Interstate 75 and University Parkway, on a long-vacant patch of grass used for grazing cows.
Lakewood Ranch, the community that straddles the Sarasota-Manateeborder east of I-75, was coming into its own. In 1998, four years after breaking ground, the development was named the best master planned community in the U.S. by the Professional Builders Magazine/National Association of Home Builders.
When Lakewood Ranch wasfounded, home prices ranged from about $90,000 to $1 million, depending on the community, Donna Soda of Premier Sotheby’s International Realtysaid. Today, prices range anywhere from $400,000 to millions – Soda said she closed on a property in late September with aprice tag of $4.65 million.
The growth of Lakewood Ranch, plus thelocation off of a major highway, with easy access to a growing metropolitan area, was enough to motivate creation ofa massive new shopping area west of the interstate.
“Lakewood Ranch is just growing by leaps and bounds – it’s a city unto itself. They felt that because of I-75 the people that would come from Sarasota and the captured audience they had in Lakewood Ranch, that the mall would thrive,” Seidel said.
Reports of what would eventually become University Town Center started to emerge in the early 2000s. Benderson received approval from Sarasota Countyto build a nearly 2 million square foot residential, retail and hotel development in 2007. The mall would be built in partnership with Taubman Centers Inc.
The Great Recession delayed the project butthe companyfinally broke ground on what would become the Mall at University Town Center in 2012.Benderson did not return a request for an interview from the Herald-Tribune.
Yet even before University Town Center’sgroundbreaking, there wereconcernsthat the new mall and shopping hub would drive potential customersaway from existing retail centers.
At 40,000 square feet, the Saksspacewas tiny, according to Herald-Tribune archives. More than once, the department store had put in for plans to expand, even considering adding a second floor.
The recession derailed those plans, and Saks packed its bags,signing on for a bigger, 80,000-square-foot space at University Town Center.
At that point, Sarasota Square and DeSoto Square were already declining, Seidel said, but the mall hurt the most by UTC’s arrival was the Crossings at Siesta Key.
“All of those high end tenants went to UTC,” he said. “The traffic that would go to Saks – that was a very, very busy store and it did very well.”
DeSoto Square’sdistress was evident in the years leading up to University Town Center’s opening.In 2012, Simon Property Group, which had owned the mall since the mid-1990s, sold it for $24.6 million to Mason Asset Management of Great Neck, New York. Two years later, Mason tried to auction off the mall, but ultimately declined the high bid of $33.75 million.
Mason didn’t do much to revamp DeSoto Square during its five-year ownership. The biggest get was Hudson’s Furniture, a Florida-based furniture retailer that moved into the vacant, two-story Dillard’s space. Hudson’s isthe only remaining DeSoto Square Mall tenant still operating.
Rumors that the mall would close persisted.Mason did not respond tointerview requests from the Herald-Tribune for this story.
By the University Town Center’s arrival in 2014,many DeSoto store owners were shaking in their boots.
When Macy’s announced it would closejust a few months ahead of the chain’s newUniversity Town Center location, another wave of devastationformed, Abraham said.
“We lost Macy’s, Sears and JCPenneyall within a seven-year period. That’s one store everytwo years,” he said. “What hurt our mall was them pulling out, not because of the business they were doing, but because they only wanted one store in the areaversus three.”
Previous coverage:
- DeSoto Square Mall lender issues credit bid for control of site
- Bradenton's DeSoto Square Mall set to be auctioned off again
- Manatee County’s only indoor shopping center, to close permanently
The finalchapter
By 2016, Mason had put the mall back on the market. Stores continued to peel off, including Aeropostale, FYEand, devastatingly, Chick-fil-A. The mall’s movie theater, which was infested by rats at the time, according to news reports, also closed.
By the following year, however, there was a glimmer of hope. A deed of sale popped up in Manatee County public records, indicating that someonehad purchased the DeSoto Square Mall again, this time for $25.5 million.
The buyer was DeSoto Owners LLC, registered to Meyer Lebovitsof Brooklyn, New York. A redevelopment effort, totaling about $20 million, would be spearheaded by Jerrell Davis, president of Madison Properties USA Southeast Region.
For about a year and a half, Davis said that redevelopment plans for DeSoto Square were underway. He promised new restaurants, retail stores and a revitalized movie theater as part of a first phase, and a second phase that could include apartments and a boutique grocery store.
In that brief period, the biggest arrival was a resale store that took over the formerMacy’s space – the one that had been Maas Brothers on opening day in 1973. Owner Joe Bernhard and his wife Deb moved their Manatee Auctions business from Ellenton and reopened it at DeSoto Square as Your Treasure House.
The mall had a bad reputation in the years leading up to the opening of Your Treasure House, Bernhard said. But he had heard that it was being cleaned up, and went to see for himself.
“Iwent over there and walked around in the middle of the day, and I thought it was fine. There was nobody here – or at the time what Ithought was nobody there,” he said. “Then somebody in my businesssocial circle told me the guy in the sporting goods shop there did okay. I talked to the fellow, Jerrell, who, long story short, said, ‘Ithink you’re a fit.’”
“It was okay. We were able to pay bills and pay the consignors, and we had people coming in and out – it was nothing fantastic,” Bernhard said. “And itwasn’t just us, it was everybody in the mall. We were holding our own, but not hitting any home runs.”
In August that year, conditions again took a devastating turn.
Romspen US Master Mortgage LP filed a motion to foreclose against the mall, alleging that DeSoto owed more than $21 million as of June 2018 on its$22,850,000 mortgage note.
Ownership, through its attorneys, tried to argue that Mason Asset Management had defrauded it during the purchase process, downplaying how bad things really were in order to get the property out of its hands. But that didn’t work.
After roughly a year and a half of back and forth, mall ownership and Romspen came to an agreement in January 2020. Under the terms, DeSoto said it would pay $1.5 million to Romspen by April 30, and another $3 million by June 1 to push a scheduled June 3 foreclosure sale back to September.
But between the time the agreement was made and the first payment was due, COVID-19 hit the U.S.On April 28, just two days before the first scheduled payment, DeSoto filed a motion for extension. COVID had made it impossible to secure the necessary financing for payments, ownership argued.
The judge didn’t buy it, and a foreclosure auction was scheduled for September. To maintain control of the property, DeSoto Owners LLC filed for bankruptcyon Sept.22, 2020. DeSoto Square Mall closed on April 30, 2021.
Ownership’s desire to hold on to the property wasn’t just a matter of pride. There wereredevelopment plans on the books.
To see itsplans realized, DeSoto Owners needsto hold on to the site, according toa representative for the mall owners who didn’t want to be identified by name.
A bankruptcy auction was held in October, where the highest bidder was lender Romspen US Master Mortgage LP.
Now, a bankruptcy sale is scheduled for December.
“The mall opened in 1973 during the height of indoor malls’ popularity,” alisting on the Commercial Real Estate Exchange websitereads.
What remains
In May 2021, a month after the DeSoto Square Mallclosed, the massive, white structure sat in silence, surrounded by palm trees and a huge parking lot with fading paint lines. Even the trees looked forlorn.
Inside, pieces of tile in the food court – in various shades of blue, white and sand to reflect the colors of nearby Anna Maria Island – werechipped. Several bugs lay dead on the floor, with no cleaning or maintenance crew aroundto sweep them up.
And it washot.Since the mall wasclosed, ownership tried to save money by turning off the air conditioning.
Overseeing the closing process wasTrina Silenzi, DeSoto Square’s last general manager.She took the job at DeSoto Square under Davis in 2017. Back then, before the foreclosure, the same old promises seemed possible once again –apartments, retail, medical offices,possibly even a high-end grocery store. Instead, bankruptcy.
Although she grew up in Bradenton, and had her first job and her first-ever date at DeSoto Square, Silenzi hadn’t been to the mall in more than 10years when she joined the management team. At the time, she said she didn’trealize stores remained open there.
When Davis told her about the redevelopment plans he had for the area, Silenzi said she believed him.
“I was excited to redevelop the area and be part of something great,” she said. “I don’t know if he truly believed it – he may have truly believed it – but since then there’s been nothing, really. It’s been stagnant.”
So many touches – the empty food court, the movie theater shell, the tile and the shuttered department storefronts – makeDeSoto Square feel like an artifact.
If you sit on one of thebenches outside of the old JCPenney store and close your eyes, you can almost picture that opening day. Back then, there was a fountain in front of Maas Brothers, and the bronze statue of Hernando DeSoto himself, welcoming shoppers through the mall’s grand gates.
What’s left of DeSoto Square Mall probably won’t remain intact much longer. But for those who were there in its heyday, during those Christmas seasons, the launch of the food court and eating at Piccadilly on Sundays after church,the memorieswill always live on.
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