RICHMOND HEIGHTS, Ohio — The city’s Planning Commission on Wednesday evening approved an ordinance that will, if passed by City Council, allow for more business uses at Richmond Town Square mall.
Macy’s closed at the Richmond Road mall in 2015, and Sears will follow suit late next month. With two anchors departing, city leaders are seeking to be proactive in finding new uses for the 51 year-old mall, purchased late last year by Mike Kohan of Great Neck, N.Y.
Building Commissioner Philip Seyboldt addressed the commission and about 35 residents who attended the meeting. Seyboldt went through 11 new uses not currently permitted by city code for the mall.
If an offer comes along the city deems appropriate, pending council approval, a conditional use permit could in the future be granted at the mall for a restaurant with a drive-through; indoor assembly for recreation, such as concerts, plays, sporting activities and museums; laboratories; basic research facilities; data processing and computer centers; and law, engineering, accounting or other professional offices.
Also, for public or private schools; assembling, packaging and warehousing facilities; wholesale or online sales; new and used vehicle sales; and accessory buildings, fences, signage and any other needs associated with the above new uses.
Present at the meeting was new Richmond Town Square Manager Leisa Russell. Russell said that since Kohan took over, $200,000 in improvements have already been made at the mall, including new roofing.
“Looking to the spring, we’re looking to do some paving, landscaping and improvements to the parking lot,” Russell said. “We’re looking at doing some things to the interior, too. Now, the interior looks better than the exterior.”
Of the mall’s future, Russell told those in attendance, “We want to be a community mall again, go back to the roots of the mall. Because you have an individual owning the mall, rather than a corporation, you have a lot more flexibility to do that.”
When a resident asked if there was any danger of the Regal Richmond Town Square movie theater also leaving, Russell said that there are no plans for that happening, but added, “The community’s going to have to step up and start visiting the mall and the theater. Look at our website, there are going to be some changes.”
While some people talk about the current decline in importance of the brick and mortar store, online retail giant Amazon.com is planning to build several physical stores. Russell said there will always be a desire for people to want to touch and see first-hand the items they’re considering purchasing.
She added, “We want to be a unique mall, to have stores you don’t find at other malls.”
Richmond Town Square has added Amazon.com return boxes and the ability to shop its stores online as just a couple of ways it is looking to the future.
Russell said she would like to see a restaurant or two added to the mall out lot.
She said she is talking with the likes of Cicis’s Pizza, a pizza buffet not now located in the immediate area, and Swenson’s, a drive-in hamburger restaurant known in the Akron area, about coming to Richmond Town Square.
As for the soon-to-be-vacated Sears, Russell said, “There is a conversation with a big box store for Sears. We don’t own it, so we don’t have control.”
Macy’s and Sears own their own buildings at Richmond Town Square.
“We don’t know if Petitti’s (Garden Center) is coming back in the spring because it’s at the Sears building.”
Russell said she’d like to see a laser tag play location in the Sears building.
Also at Wednesday’s meeting, the commission recommended to council approval of legislation that would allow for medical marijuana business activities to take place at the mall, and in the retail district along Chardon Road, from Brush Road to the Willoughby Hills city line.
“We want to decide where good locations may be so if someone comes to us (to do business in the medical marijuana industry), it won’t take us six months to act,” Seyboldt told the commission.
City Council recently repealed a moratorium on the medical marijuana business operating in Richmond Heights in hopes of luring such businesses.
When asked about the upside of the industry coming to Richmond Heights, Seyboldt said that jobs in cultivating and processing medical marijuana, as well as the laboratories associated with its production, are well paying.
He said that those who cultivate cannabis can earn in the $50,000-per-year range, while those in the labs can earn above $100,000 annually, salaries that would add to the city’s income tax collections.
“It looks like the village of Claribel has come full circle,” commission member Terry Butler said of the city’s agrarian past and Richmond Heights’ name prior to becoming a city in 1917. “It started with orchards and cider presses, and now its going to medical marijuana.”
A public hearing to discuss the possibility of medical marijuana being cultivated, processed and/or dispensed in Richmond Heights will be held at 7 p.m. Feb. 27 in the council chambers of city hall, 26789 Highland Road.
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