Rolling Hills Estates agrees to mall office space
The City of Rolling Hills Estates reached agreement last month with the Promenade on the Peninsula mall for a 20-year agreement to lease up to 50,000 square feet of retail space to medical office and educational uses.
The agreement requires mall owner Stoltz Management Company to pay the city $1 per square foot for office space the mall ends up filling. Those payments were admittedly offered more as a gesture than anything equivalent to the potential sales tax revenue city planners envisioned years ago.
The current economic downturn has made the beleaguered mall face a spate of vacancies in recent years. City officials managed to preserve the first floor of retail while restricting office use to only the upper floors of the mall.
“I’m very sad to vote for this,” said councilwoman Susan Seamans. “Our city was incorporated with the idea of depending not only on property tax revenues but sales tax and that requires retail. We broke our butts in the ‘90s to try and improve the retail situation and liveliness of our shopping district. And it just breaks my heart.” ER