LOGAN – Logan City officials report that the once-thriving Cache Valley Mall is now closed and ready for the wrecking ball.
Kirk Jensen, the economic development director for Logan City, made that announcement this week.
Without specifying a date for the razing to begin, Jensen said he suspected that “pre-demolition activities” could begin in the next month or so.
Those chores will include asbestos remediation, erection of construction fences and other preparatory activities.
As part of its final days, the mall operators are holding liquidation sales from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Saturday, April 6.
“Everything must go,” according to their Facebook post. That includes benches; food court chairs and tables; ladders; an air compressor; a table saw and assorted shop tools; office chairs; Christmas décor; drinking fountains; filing cabinets; floor scrubbers and buffers; folding tables and chairs; wheelchairs; and, much more.
The original timetable for the redevelopment of the mall area called for the property to be transferred to the new owners in early November of 2023, with the mall businesses relocating to new facilities around Logan during January and February.
Despite the delay resulting from legal details of the transfer, Jensen said that the developer (Woodsonia Real Estate, Inc. of Omaha, NE) had acquired the mall property and surrounding areas as of April 1 and the planned redevelopment project is ready to move ahead.
Located at 1300 North Main Street in Logan, the Cache Valley Mall was built in the mid-1970s.
In its heyday in the decades that followed, the mall housed up to three major retail anchors and 63 smaller stores and services.
In recent years, however, the mall had no anchor stores. Those now vacant facilities were last occupied by C-A-L Ranch, Herberger’s and JCPenney retailers. Many of the mall’s smaller business spaces were also vacant in the last months of the mall’s operation.
The mall’s property is part of an area that has already been designated as the 1400 North Main Community Reinvestment Project by the members of the Logan Municipal Council in their alternative role as Logan Redevelopment Agency.
At a city council meeting in August of 2023, Drew Snyder, one of the project’s developers, explained that marketplace factors had killed the mall’s economic value to local taxing entities.
The redevelopment proposal, he added, will boost the city’s tax base and help to fulfill Logan’s housing needs.
At present, the total tax base value of the mall and adjacent property to the south is estimated at $48 million, Jensen said. After redevelopment by Woodsonia, the projected total taxable value of that property will be $240 million.
As proposed, that redevelopment project would provide space for a large retail tenant, 346 apartments and a 156-room hotel on the mall site.
The four-story apartments would be spread out between four buildings on the east and southeast side of the property.
The ground floor of the hotel would be reserved for commercial and restaurant tenants (approximately 21,000 square feet) with three floors of hotel space above.
The space allocated for the big box retail tenant would cover 150,000 square feet.
Of the proposed 346 apartments, Jensen explained, the mix would include 35 so-called income-targeted (affording housing) units.
In its role as the Logan Redevelopment Agency (RDA), the Logan City Council has also facilitated similar projects in its Downtown, Northwest and South Main redevelopment zones.