Main Street in Hunt Valley

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The mall nicknamed Death Valley will be turned into a neo-traditional Main Street, according to a conceptual plan for the site.

Erwin L. Greenberg Commercial Corp., backed with Prudential’s money, plans to turn the long-troubled Hunt Valley Mall inside-out, creating a Main Street feel instead of a traditional enclosed mall.

A top executive with Erwin L. Greenberg Commercial Corp. unveiled preliminary renderings for its redevelopment of the struggling Hunt Valley Mall yesterday at a meeting of the Hunt Valley Business Forum. Included in the plans is a large outdoor plaza, or Main Street, that includes restaurant seating, fountains, extensive landscaping and pedestrian and automobile access from Shawan Road. The Baltimore development firm specializing in retail and entertainment property closed on the property on Dec. 31, said Greenberg president Brian Gibbons. The company plans to demolish much of the mall’s two-story interior and is conducting demolition studies now. Construction is expected begin in spring or early summer and end about two years later, Gibbons said.After demolition and renovation, the mall will have about 280,000 square feet of enclosed space, compared to the existing 400,000 square feet. About two dozen small tenants and two anchor stores are being sought, but Sears, Dick’s Sporting Goods and Wal-Mart will remain. DSW Shoes will relocate to another space within the mall, Gibbons said. Gibbons said the mall is entitled to three liquor licenses and his company is courting local restaurants as potential tenants. The mall will be a day and night destination and could include a health club, he added.With its ample landscaping and small town feel, the mall might not mesh with existing retailers on the site, such as Wal-Mart and Sears. But Gibbons said if the design cut off those stores from the rest of the development, it wasn’t purposeful. Connecticut-based Starwood Ceruzzi, which bought the property in 2000 and promised to spend $40 million to bring in big box retailers, was the last in a string of owners to try to resuscitate the mall in northern Baltimore County’s prosperous Hunt Valley corridor. Gibbons said the former owner’s problems with the mall, which lost anchor store R.H. Macy & Co. in 1992, were not site specific and stemmed from Ceruzzi’s lack of available capital. Greenberg, which recently completed Village of Waugh Chapel in Crofton, won’t have that problem, he said. The firm’s joint venture agreement on the project with Prudential translates into ample and secure financing. County Councilman Bryan McIntire, who represents Hunt Valley, gave Gibbons a vote of confidence, but recalled the mall’s rocky start and patchy history. He said when the mall opened in 1980, it wasn’t the result of great backing from county leaders. “It should have never happened when it did,” McIntire said, adding that the county council barely approved the mall’s plans and then-County Executive Donald P. Hutchinson didn’t support it. But in its most recent incarnation, the mall will get a different reception from county government, McIntire said. “This is going to work, I’m convinced of it,” McIntire said. “There won’t be any hitches on the county level if the county executive and I have anything to do with it.”Many in the Hunt Valley business community are looking to the venture as the solution to the perennially floundering mall. “This [the mall] has been a white elephant sitting on a hill,” said Shirley Tyler, a Forum member and consultant with Right Management Consultants. “But I think this is beautiful.”