Cinderella’s coach turned into a pumpkin when time ran out, but that hasn’t deterred officials in Englewood, CO, who have unveiled their latest plan to redevelop a proposal affectionately called “Cinderella City”, a $38 million conversion of an old mall into a complex of city hall offices, retail, and residential units. The city is developing the project, and has reportedly received a letter of interest from Wal-Mart to build a 129,000 sf store on the property. Mayor Tom Burns admits that “there are concerns about some of the design features and impacts on the neighborhood”. But the Mayor says he is “very excited” about the project. Wal-Mart is slated to buy land at the site for $3.3 million, and local officials expect that the city will net $2.7 million in new sales taxes yearly. Cinderella City before its demise was billed as the largest mall west of the Mississippi river. Now the city is hoping to turn the pumpkin back into a gleaming coach again, and put Englewood back on the national map. But the city has apparently done no study to indicate where all there additional sales tax money will come from, and how much stores like Wal-Mart will merely capture sales from existing businesses in the area. Also a mystery is why 350 people would want to live in the shadow of a Wal-Mart and a 24 movie theatre complex? With 420,000 s.f. of new retail space planned for the site, it may be that too much retail is being crammed into Cinderella’s slipper, which, so the story goes, was as fragile as glass.
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