Revitalizing Fiesta Mall

By Jon Garrido, former executive director of economic development for the City of El Paso and former economic development coordinator for the City of Tucson

MESA June 16, 2004 - The Mesa City Council in discussing next year’s budget voted to hire someone to focus on revitalization of the Fiesta Mall area.

When Fiesta Mall opened its doors it was the only major retail center in the East Valley but its success was instrumental in the demise of Main Street as former customers abandoned Main Street to shop at Fiesta Mall.

Then it began: Numerous actions to revitalize Main Street back to the vibrancy of the old Main Street prior to Fiesta Mall.

In real estate there is a limited supply of oxygen and Fiesta Mall sucked all the oxygen that once gave life to Main Street. Now new big discount boxes, the new Chandler Fashion Center regional mall and Arizona Mills Mall down the highway are sucking up the limited supply of available oxygen in the trade area leaving Fiesta Mall gasping for life.

Absolutely nothing undertaken by the city or even the area’s commercial stores will do anything to restore one molecule of oxygen to Fiesta Mall.

While Fiesta Mall is still marketed as realizing $350 per square foot in sales, any daily visitor can see its time as come and gone. The real litmus test is the wiliness of its owners to continue ownership and we all know the mall is for sale.

Nothing the city does sprinkling magic dust will bring Fiesta Mall back to its heyday. One need only to look to Main Street.

To once again duplicate Main Street type cosmetic superficial assistance to the Fiesta Mall area is like applying a band-aid to mask the hemorrhage of consumers leaving Fiesta Mall to shop elsewhere.

A city staff person assigned to provide guidance on zoning changes and other economic development tools such as giving the area a stronger identity and encouraging more office and residential development is public intervention that will not work.

Any residential real estate developer or even agent knows housing above commercial on major arterials has no demand. Housing above commercial on small quaint village streets certainly works but not one single buyer able to afford housing above commercial on a major arterial will ever be found. This is why historically housing fronting on major streets always has a difficult time selling.

But high density apartments would work.

Within the past couple of months, I have read in the Tribune of some of the concepts suggested to revitalize Fiesta Mall.

Someone suggested Fiesta Mall become a Hispanic mall. The problem is some think Hispanics are different than other Americans. Wal-Mart is now Mexico’s largest retailer. What has happened to small mom and pop businesses all over Mexico is they have closed their operations because as in the United States, small business operations can not compete with the scale of economies Wal Mart champions in providing the lowest prices in any market.

The only life preserver available to Fiesta Mall is to attract a destination activity or major retail operation unique to the market area. Unfortunately, there are none. If such a destination or new retail operation was looking to enter the East Valley market, there are so many other better locations that have demographics to justify investments. Not even the expansions of Mesa Community College or the hospital will help. Consumers still have new choices to drawn from and this is where they will do their buying. When Fiesta Mall was the only kid on the block they controlled the market. With the entry of new retail operations, there are just too many choices and consumers will always gravitate to newer bolder retail operations.