It’s time to just say no to GK

By Ames Tribune

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It's time for GK Development, owner of the North Grand Mall in Ames, to meet its obligations. The city of Ames has given the mall owner four extensions since 2008 on an agreement to reconfigure and improve the parking lots around the mall, and the next deadline, July 18, looms.

It's not as if the city is trying to get GK to make good on its promise to remodel the mall into a more attractive, modern lifestyle shopping center called The Streets of North Grand. GK has indicated those plans are dead, and one wonders how real they ever were.

The North Grand plans looked good when Bucky Wolford was negotiating for approval of his lifestyle center at East 13th Street and Interstate 35, and one of the arguments against Wolford's development was that Ames already had a mall that was planning major renovation.

But Wolford went bust, and his land is on track for a sheriff's sale. And The Streets of North Grand never materialized.

At issue right now, however, are just the parking areas. Because of the way the parcel is divided up, one of the parking lots doesn't meet the city's requirement for parking spaces. Not only did GK agree to reconfigure the parking spaces, it also agreed to improve the landscaping, lighting, traffic islands and pedestrian access from 30th Street and Grand Avenue.

In theory, these improvements together might make the mall more attractive to both shoppers and potential tenants, but we think GK has been given enough time to do just this small part of its development plan.

The City Council will consider tonight whether to give GK another extension on the parking lot. The city holds a bond for $480,000, which would pay for some, but not all, of the parking improvements GK agreed to make.

City staff has outlined five options:

1. Give GK another extension on the original terms of the agreement. That looks to us like another year of inaction.

2. Deny the extension and prepare for a legal battle to use the bond money to upgrade the parking lot. This could end up being costly for the city and still prolong the mall's sorry condition, but at least it would be action of some kind.

3. Grant an extension in exchange for a commitment from GK that it will make good on some of the non-parking improvements identified in The Streets of North Grand plan. While this might be a good idea if it would work, there's no evidence that GK will honor any new commitments any better than it has honored past ones.

4. GK could submit a new site plan that includes conforming parking. Again, what value have GK's plans and promises had in the past?

5. GK could submit new plans that reunite the three pieces of the property into one lot, undoing the lot split that caused the need to reconfigure the parking lots in the first place. Then nothing would need to be done.

Denying GK another extension and drawing on the bond could be a hassle for the city, but none of the other options looks likely to produce results. GK's track record on meeting its commitments is abysmal.

Another extension, even if used as leverage to extract more promises from GK, brings to mind the old adage, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

Enough, GK. It's time for the city to just say no.