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The Dillard’s department store chain is holding up redevelopment plans on Longmont’s Twin Peaks Mall while it fights an eminent-domain claim the city filed earlier this year, an official representing the mall’s owner said Wednesday.
Dillard’s has opposed the proposed 50-acre Village at the Peaks—which the owner, Fort Collins-based NewMark Merrill Mountain States has said might “be the hottest redevelopment in Colorado in over five years”—and has rejected requests to either be part of the development or to sell to the mall’s ownership.
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According to the Longmont Times-Call, Dillard’s owns its building and has a lease agreement that allows it to block any redevelopment on the current Twin Peaks property—a position that pressed Longmont to file an eminent-domain claim this past April to move the project forward. The city has already agreed to contribute $27.5 million of the $80 million needed to redevelop the property. The Times-Call initially reported that improvements would be funded in part through tax increment financing and through a mill levy the mall would put on itself.
A court proceeding between Dillard’s and the city is scheduled for later this month, and a best-case scenario for opening the Village at the Peaks now is sometime in 2015 (a year later than initially expected). Already, Regal Entertainment Group, Sam’s Club, and Whole Foods Market have been announced as the three anchors for the project.
—Image courtesy of Shutterstock