After lo these many years of letting University Mall distintegrate into a dangerous, hollow, grimy pile of mold and pigeon poop — and finally within inches of losing a federal court suit over its management — the universe’s largest property developer, Simon Property Group, has hired a local PR firm to declare it has only the best interests of the mall, midtown and the entire city at heart. If only those mean owners of the ground under the mall would be reasonable and work with, not against, Simon on a redevelopment of the property for a mixed use project — retail, commercial and residential.

Good idea. It would have been better back when Simon was working in league with Dillard’s to trash all of midtown with its Summit Mall. Back when Simon was deadbeating the city on money it promised to pay for a midtown study. Back when — and still — it stonewalled every effort by every reporter to get information out of the famously secretive outfit. Back when — and still — it was grossly misrepresenting the extent of work it had done to make University Mall viable again.

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Perhaps you detect a lack of sympathy for Simon. You detect right.

But I’ll take a deep breath. The old mall needs to go. A new development needs to take its place. It does not need any subsidies from taxpayers, not with Charles Cella and similar owning the land under the mall and Simon with a long-term lease on development. They can afford to finance a new project. Let’s see a serious proposal. Let’s get out of court and build something good there. But expect my sympathy for Simon to be in short supply. Simon has been a bad citizen. It needs to do more than issue a news release to prove it’s changed its tune.

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Simon news release, from the Paschall group, on the jump.

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