South Bay Social District waits out funding cooldown
by Garth Meyer City leaders gathered June 1 on the third floor of the South Bay Galleria, past Cinnabon and across from Champs Sports, for a Redondo Beach Roundtable featuring a presentation about the coming South Bay Social District. Redevelopment plans have slowed, project community engagement liaison Geoff Maleman told the group, because of higher interest rates and hesitation in the lending industry after the failure of Silicon Valley Bank. In the mall’s “Community Room,” standing next to an 8 X 8-foot, lighted project model, Maleman said that, even earlier, financing was tough – and to get tenants to sign more than letters of intent – because South Bay Social District was assumed to be just a mall remodeling. All of this led to a new strategy; to seek construction money “with a piece of equity”; more than just traditional banks financing construction and receiving profit from interest. “The delay in getting a shovel in the ground is just a victim of the current financial environment,” Maleman said. “A lot of lenders are in a freeze pattern.” He emphasized that the South Bay Social District will be a lifestyle destination with restaurants, residential, office and a hotel, as…
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