Southbridge Mall sale completed, paving way for redevelopment into entertainment center

MASON CITY — The sale of Southbridge Mall in Mason City to a developer who wants to transform the 37-year-old facility into an entertainment center was completed on Wednesday.

SBMC, LLC is headed by David Rachie, who is also spearheading the construction of the Hyatt Place Hotel in the eastern part of the main mall parking lot, as well as Bob Johnson of Dubuque, who helped transform a building in that city’s Millwork District into a mixed-use commercial and residential center. SBMC plans to repurpose the mall with new retail stores, several restaurants, bars and recreational businesses.

Mason City mayor Bill Schickel says it’s fantastic for Mason City to complete another step in the checklist for the River City Renaissance project.  “There’s a lot of benefits to this, repurposing the whole mall that will go along with the very successful arena and performing arts pavilion, along with so many other things going on downtown, the Riverwalk, the work at Music Man Square, and the new hotel. It’s just very, very exciting.”

Schickel points to the success of Johnson’s project in Dubuque as what can be anticipated with the Southbridge project. “A lot of successful things have happened in Dubuque, so we’re really grateful to have some developers and investors from Dubuque and Minnesota with this kind of interest in Mason City. The scope of the project remains basically the same. It includes replacing the roof, remodeling the interior and exterior. A family entertainment center, movie theaters, restaurants, bars, limited retail, but really a complete conversion of the mall.”

The original redevelopment pitch by SBMC called the redeveloped project “Hollywoodland”, but Schickel says that probably won’t happen.  “There have been a lot of comments on the suggested name ‘Hollywoodland’, and they indicated that’s just been a working name and that probably will not be the name used.”

As part of an amendment to a development agreement between the city and SBMC approved by the City Council Tuesday night, the arena and adjoining offices portion of the mall have been sold to the city for $1. Schickel says the sale will allow the city to better control what happens with the arena.  “When we had the campaign, the referendum on the arena and the River City Renaissance Project, one of the main criticisms we heard was that we were building an arena that was going to be owned by an out-of-town, New York investor. This changes that. This puts that arena back into local hands. We were paying a substantial rent on that arena, in fact more rent than we were getting back in property taxes, so this is a win-win for Mason City.”

As part of the development agreement to repurpose the mall, the city would provide SBMC a ten-year abatement of the incremental taxes generated by the redeveloped mall with the total cost of the tax rebate not exceeding $12.75 million.