A key tenant in the Sawgrass Mills expansion has dropped out, but mall officials said that won’t scuttle plans for the entertainment mecca.
The animal attraction, American Wilderness, has decided not to join the 306,099-square-foot expansion. An IMAX theater, talked about last year, also is out of the picture.
“Filling the spaces is not a hurdle,” said Mills Corp. Senior Vice President Mark Rivers from a convention in Las Vegas.
Sawgrass Mills is the biggest moneymaker of the Mills Corp.’s eight malls, he said. Rivers predicts signing a new leasee within two to three weeks, saying it would most likely be an entertainment tenant.
City Manager Patrick Salerno said the American Wilderness project raised skepticism from the beginning.
“I personally was never sold on the concept of the American Wilderness,” Salerno said, “and when I heard the news I frankly was not disappointed in the slightest.”
“Expansion Phase. Opening in late 1998!” reads a banner at the Sawgrass Mills construction site, next to the movie theater and in front of Burlington Coat Factory, where heavy machinery and workers in hard hats are spinning up dust.
Blueprints show a pedestrian-friendly space, with canopied stores and cafes, decorative concrete pavers, gazebos, outdoor seating, raised crosswalks, kiosks and pushcarts, drop-off areas for shoppers and a dramatic Art Deco entrance to the movie theater.
Confirmed projects are a Ron Jon Surf Shop, Travel Expo retail store, Foot Locker, Cheesecake Factory, Legal Seafood, Ruby’s Diner, Wolfgang Puck Cafe, Los Ranchos steakhouse, La Salsa and Ghirardelli’s Chocolate store.
“What we’re doing is cherry-picking uses we know will be extremely productive,” said Kent Digby, the company’s executive vice president.
The $30 million expansion is planned for the fall, a little later than the opening of the Broward County Arena across the street.
The area has become hot since the arena concrete started pouring. A luxury hotel is to be built across from the arena, and developers, realtors and investors are jostling for space.
The city is working on restricting what can be built on one commercial tract near the mall to make sure the new addition will add nicely to the mix. Blueprints at Sunrise’s planning office show 60,948 square feet of the mall expansion will be devoted to “amusement.” The mix has changed slightly. The expansion was cut by 29,088 square feet. One of the six planned movie screens was killed, and the size of the GameWorks arcade dwindled.
American Wilderness, located at three other Mills malls, dropped out because it is “repositioning and restructuring,” Rivers said.
The IMAX theater was killed about nine months ago because Mills Corp. was not 100 percent confident about it, Digby said.
An IMAX screen already exists in downtown Fort Lauderdale at the Museum of Discovery and Science.
