How to Turn a Dead Mall Into Walkable Place

Cleveland Heights resident and architect Roger Bliss offered that Severance’s next owner (the property goes to Sheriff’s sale this month) should go big -- not tinker around the edges.

Bliss asserted that Severance could walk down the same path as Belmar, a dying mall that was redeveloped in 2004 into a walkable neighborhood in the suburb of Lakewood, Colorado.

Belmar appears as an example in Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson’s book, Retrofitting Suburbia. Developers spent millions of dollars knocking down vacant department stores and rebuilding a small scale, mixed-use town center. Ground floor retail with commercial and residential above, 23 new roads and parks were added, creating a neighborhood.

“It was quite an accomplishment,” said Bliss, “These projects are complicated and they take time, but there are plenty of examples of redevelopment."

Developer Peter Rubin, who lives in the adjacent Courtyards of Severance condo development—which his company built -- likewise hopes Severance’s next iteration is as visionary. The key, he said, will be articulating a direction that aligns both with the city’s history and values like sustainability and pedestrian friendliness. That will help build what he called the political will to get it done.

Bliss concluded that Severance’s current low-density, single purpose land use is a big part of the reason it is underperforming.

“If we want to encourage efficient development patterns, we have to increase density.”