Even though the DeSoto Square mall is no more, one store is determined to stay put
When Hudson’s Furniture moved into a vacant Dillard’s department store in 2014 at DeSoto Square, two other anchors occupied the mall.
But Sears closed in 2019, and is now home to Go Store It Self Storage. J.C. Penney closed a year later.
Now, DeSoto Square mall itself is closed as the owner seeks financing to redevelop the property.
Despite the mall’s closing, Hudson’s furniture remains open, and owner Fred Hudson said Thursday that the retailer isn’t going anywhere.
“It has been a very good store for Hudson’s and we are in the process of trying to purchase the property,” said Hudson, 65.
When news of the mall’s closing broke last week, Hudson’s general manager Chet Ballenger told the Herald that Hudson’s “owners are 100 percent committed to staying open in DeSoto Square mall. Our business has been phenomenal, and in fact we are hiring.”
Fred Hudson reiterated that commitment on Thursday.
“We will stay in Bradenton, no matter what,” said Hudson, who started the company in 1981 and has 18 stores scattered along the I-4 corridor from Ormond Beach to Bradenton and Sarasota.
The 110,000-square-foot space has two outside entrances independent from the mall and provides 120 jobs in the community, Hudson said.
Hudson’s Furniture is the one bright spot in what has been an otherwise bleak downward spiral of lost business after New York-based Meyer Lebovitz bought the mall, 303 301 Blvd. W., in April 2017 for $22.8 million.
Soon after the acquisition, Lebovitz announced that he had sweeping plans to revitalize the mall, but those plans failed to materialize. In 2018, lender Romspen U.S. Master Mortgage LP, a Cayman Islands limited partnership, filed to foreclose on the property, saying that that the mall owners failed to repay $21.7 million of the loan that had come due.
“They have from Day One made it extremely tough,” Hudson said of the mall owners. “Meyer Lebovitz came to me multiple times for a meeting and stood me up every time.”
Mall owners have another day in court on June 14, and are expected to report whether they have been able to raise the money needed to redevelop 57.86-acre mall property.
Those plans, outlined in a Nov. 22 memo to Manatee County Building Services, call for a 128,514-square-foot retail-lifestyle center, a 40,000 square-foot grocery, 90,000-square-feet of office space, three retail outparcels, totaling 16,250 square feet, and more than 500 residential units.
“It is expected that the full build-out of the DeSoto Square Mall Redevelopment Project may take as long as 10 years to complete and include multiple builders/developers involved in various portions of the project,” Kimley Horn, the company that designed the proposed redevelopment project, wrote in the memo.
“The proposed development will require the complete removal of the existing mall and infrastructure, under the control of the applicant (not including Sears), to incorporate the new development,” the memorandum said.
Hudson is closely watching the bankruptcy proceeding. If the mall owners can’t find financing for their redevelopment plans, the case is expected to be returned to foreclosure, allowing the property to be sold.
If the property has a foreclosure sale, “we will be fine,” Hudson said.
This story was originally published May 6, 2021 at 11:24 AM.
