One of the nation’s largest retailers has its eyes on the Gate City area as developers make progress on a project to convert the Pine Ridge Mall into an open-air retail center.
SimonCRE, a national development and acquisition firm headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, recently met with Bannock County Commissioners to discuss a fee waiver for hauling construction waste to the landfill when the eventual teardown of much of the Pine Ridge Mall commences next year.
During that meeting, held on Tuesday at the Bannock County Courthouse in Pocatello, founder and CEO of SimonCRE, Joshua Simon, who appeared via Zoom, mentioned that Target could bring one of its large big box stores to the area as the massive development advances.
“We have a large retailer, Target, that has been looking at the site and is very much interested,” Simon told the commissioners. “They would build a new 130,000-square-foot store.”
Simon delivered the comments in front of the commission while explaining how much a large big box retailer such as Target would add to the sales tax base of the local community. When reached for comment for this article on Thursday, Simon declined to comment.
“When you look at the investment that (Target) makes with sales tax revenue, they alone do more than the entire mall by probably about five or six times,” Simon told the commissioners. “My guess on sales tax is the mall probably creates … more than $10 million or $11 million, not including Hobby Lobby or C-A-L Ranch. You look at Target stores sales and I would say the average Target does $40 million to $60 million.”
While Target coming to the Pine Ridge Mall area is still a theoretical proposition that would require many more conversations with local government officials and SimonCRE executives, the Idaho State Journal in May reported that a different big box store, Kohl’s is likely a reality if the open-air retail center comes to fruition.
To facilitate the development project, Much of the current mall property will soon have a date with a wrecking ball, aside from a handful of existing tenants that will continue to occupy their current locations on the mall property — including C-A-L Ranch where Shopko was formerly located, the Gem Prep: Pocatello Charter School, Hobby Lobby and Planet Fitness where Herberger’s was formerly located.
During Tuesday’s meeting, Simon requested a fee waiver of up to $298,000 for hauling debris from the demolished mall property to the Bannock County Landfill.
Chubbuck Mayor Kevin England was also at the meeting and described SimonCRE executives as being diligent and showing that they have the track record to complete the mall redevelopment project, adding that Chubbuck could look to reimburse Bannock County if it were to provide a fee waiver once the Tax Increment Financing, or TIF, district where the mall is located closes in 11 years.
“I’ve heard about bringing a Target here probably ever since I was elected 11 years ago,” England said. “People would be tickled to death to have it. My encouragement would be to do this.”
Kristi Klauser, comptroller for Bannock County, pointed out during the meeting that the landfill is an enterprise fund, meaning that it is not funded by local taxpayers and instead recovers costs through user fees.
“Because this is an enterprise fund none of the fees will be recouped once the value goes up,” said Klauser while speaking to the notion that the closure of the TIF district around the mall property could result in the county recouping losses associated with the fee waiver. “The landfill will never see those dollars. The TIF district isn’t going to retire for 11 years. That money is going to the TIF district, not the taxing district. Those are hard costs that we cannot recoup. These are ongoing costs that we are going to absorb through other users and basically just eat it.”
Bannock County Commissioner Jeff Hough added that he believed any fee waiver would be more of a soft cost than a hard cost because giving SimonCRE a break wouldn’t actually change how the landfill operates.
“We’re not doing anything other than what we are already doing,” he said. “It’s not like we’re building widgets to give away at an additional cost.”
There was also some discussion among the county commissioners and Bannock County Landfill Director Dillon Evans about potential savings SimonCRE could take advantage of by transporting some of the debris from the demolition to local gravel pits as opposed to the landfill. Evans mentioned that the cost to take a truckload of demolished concrete to a gravel pit to be reused is $50 per truckload whereas the cost to deposit construction and demolition materials at the landfill is $27 per ton.
Commissioner John Crowder expressed some hesitancy in providing SimonCRE with a fee waiver without exploring how much of the demolition materials would be able to be taken to a gravel pit, mentioning that a fee waiver on the front end would not provide any incentive for SimonCRE to explore the gravel pit option.
Both Hough and Commission Chairman Ernie Moser expressed a desire to help support SimonCRE’s venture by providing the waiver, with Moser mentioning a previous project in the county involving a malting company that elected to go to the Idaho Falls area because of lacking support.
Ultimately, the commissioners voted 2-1 with Crowder dissenting to provide SimonCRE with a $200,00 fee waiver for depositing demolition debris at the landfill as the Pine Ridge Mall redevelopment project moves along.
Simon told the commissioners the goal is to begin demolition of some of the Pine Ridge Mall area in the spring or summer of 2025.
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