Retail

By Taylor Williams If the whole mall redevelopment thing doesn’t work out, you can always become a marriage counselor. Perhaps some additional training and education would be needed for such a career transition to actually take place. But mall and shopping center owners who undertake high-risk redevelopments undoubtedly have firsthand appreciation of the importance of providing clear and courteous communication to the many different groups they deal with, from municipal leaders to longstanding tenants to onsite contract workers. That’s not to say that poor communication will necessarily kill a mall redevelopment. The inability to secure zoning overlay districts, civic partnerships for infrastructural improvements or feasibly priced construction loans in 2024 — these are variables over which mall owners have limited control and can actually sink these projects in their infancy. And those factors only come into play once the development team has done its due diligence and determined what uses and levels of density the project will feature.  “After you’ve considered the macro-level needs of the market and the asset itself, you enter a phase that we call ‘the minefield map,’” says Steve Plenge, CEO of Pacific Retail Capital Partners. “Reciprocal easement agreements [that regulate design or tenancy issues] by …