BRIEFS

Out of the box: New eateries part of Volusia Mall expansion

Volusia Mall prepares to demolish old auto center to expand 'restaurant district'

Clayton Park
clayton.park@news-jrnl.com

DAYTONA BEACH — As the buzz builds for One Daytona, the new entertainment/retail/dining complex across the street from Daytona International Speedway, nearby Volusia Mall is hoping to create some excitement of its own.

The mall's owners, CBL & Associates Properties, plan to add several new eateries and stores by year's end, but not inside the massive enclosed shopping center.

The planned "Retail & Restaurant District East" project will be built on the site of the Sears Auto Center in front of the mall, and will include already the already announced Bonefish Grill and Metro Diner, plus a first for Florida, The Casual Pint, a Knoxville, Tennessee-based "craft beer market" chain.

The aging auto center building is slated to be torn down to make way for the new project, which was likened last month by an attorney representing the developers to The Pavilion at Port Orange, an outdoor lifestyle center that CBL built and opened in 2010.

It's part of a trend that continues to grow nationally by owners of traditional enclosed malls to reinvigorate their properties and stay competitive, not only with other shopping center operators by also e-commerce giants like Amazon, according to an industry study.

"The age of the cookie-cutter mall is over: developers are remaking malls as quickly as they need to in order to remain competitive," a 2006 report by the Washington, D.C.-based Urban Land Institute states. The report, titled "Ten Principles for Rethinking the Mall," noted both the growing popularity of pedestrian-friendly open-air shopping centers as well as the "valuable opportunities" that owners of traditional malls have in the form of "underutilized" parking lots.

That line of thinking was echoed by local attorney Rob Merrell of Cobb Cole in presenting CBL's plans to redevelop the former Sears Auto Center site at a Jan. 17 City Commission meeting.

"CBL, as you know, owns The Pavilion, which is more of an outdoor center type of shopping/entertainment facility, which we're going to be seeing this (the former Sears Auto Center site) morphing into," Merrell said in making a case for approving a rezone to allow the Volusia Mall expansion project.

Merrell described the 1.1 million-square-foot mall as having more space for parking than it needs and "some things which has grown tired over the years," a reference to the aging Sears Auto Center, which is more than 40 years old.

He also compared the mall's expansion project to two other significant "repurposing projects" underway locally: insurance giant Brown & Brown Inc.'s recently announced plans to build a 10-story headquarters building in downtown Daytona Beach, on the site of former auto dealerships along North Beach Street, and International Speedway Corp's One Daytona development, which is being built on the site of the old General Electric plant on West International Speedway Boulevard, one block west of Volusia Mall.

CBL's plans call for replacing the former 18,000-square-foot auto center with a three-building retail complex that will include trees, landscaping and sidewalks. The new buildings will offer a combined total of 24,130 square feet of space and room for five restaurants and two retail stores, according to plans filed with the city.

Merrell told the City Commission that the project was essentially an eastward expansion of the "restaurant district" that CBL has created in recent years on land in front of and just west of the enclosed shopping center. The district currently consists of five restaurants: Applebee's, Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen, Bahama Breeze, Olive Garden and IHOP.

Stacey Keating, a spokeswoman for Chattanooga, Tennessee-based CBL, declined to answer questions for this story, saying that her company will be "sharing additional project details" this coming week.

CBL in its latest annual earnings report, released earlier this month, disclosed that it intends to invest $9 million to $11 million to redevelop the former Sears Auto Center and that it expects the new restaurants and stores to open by the end of this year.

At last month's City Commission meeting, Merrell said two tenants that have signed on for the project so far are Bonefish Grill and Metro Diner.

The earnings report revealed a third tenant: The Casual Pint. 

The Daytona Beach franchise location will be the chain's first in Florida, confirmed Robert Mitchell, The Casual Pint's vice president of franchise development.

"We're excited to be in Daytona," said Mitchell in a phone interview.

The Daytona Beach location for The Casual Pint will be owned by local franchisees Kevin and Suzy Martin, a couple who recently relocated here from Knoxville, Tennessee.

Kevin Martin, who spoke with The News-Journal, said he and his wife anticipate opening their "boutique bar" by November.

This past week, employees of the old Sears Auto Center, which closed Jan. 25, were working to remove equipment from the building.

"We have to turn the keys over (to Volusia Mall's management) on the 24th (of February)," said Ron Ross, who has been a mechanic at the auto center for the past 7 1/2 years.

Kyle Doski, the auto center's manager, said the center's closing affected eight employees, including himself.

"We knew when the property was sold last year (by Sears to CBL) that it was coming," said Doski, who has worked at the auto center the past 21 years. "But with all the progress on ISB (International Speedway Boulevard) and its being a prime location, we hoped we were safe. We were a very profitable auto center."

The auto center was one of the first tenants to open at Volusia Mall in 1975, according to Doski. 

Doski said several people came up to him and his staff this past week asking if the auto center was still open.

He added that his understanding is that the mall's owners "want to get the restaurants open as soon as they can."

Doski said he and his staff will all receive severance pay from Sears, which is keeping its longtime department store at the mall. "I'm going to stay in the industry," he said.

Susan Cerbone, a spokeswoman for the city, said CBL has applied for permits both to demolish the former auto center as well as to build two of the three planned new retail buildings.

Rick Newingham, a mechanic who has worked at the auto center for 38 years, said seeing it about to be demolished is something he would have thought unimaginable when he first started working there when it was still a new store.

"I thought I'd retire first," he said.