JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A once thriving part of the Arlington community now continues to hope for better days ahead.
The Regency Square Mall at 9501 Arlington Expressway has seen a steady decline in businesses and customers over the last two decades.
It was the area’s first large regional mall and was once a thriving place where children and adults would meet up, go shopping and go to the movies.
“The mall was the place to be. It was where we shopped, where we hung out, where we went to the movies for entertainment. So it was, it was everything to us as a child,” Lakita Spann, former mall tenant, said.
Spann, Tyrica Moore, and Autumn Redding remember their childhood visits to Regency, which inspired them to open their business there.
“When I moved in, as far as I knew, the mall seemed to be in good condition, which was one of the reasons we decided to move our business there, even though there were not a lot of businesses in the mall at that time, a lot of businesses that moved out and closed, or even moved to other malls. But for me, I felt like it was a good opportunity for us to really kind of revive what seemed to have good bones,” Spann said.
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After a video of the mall’s conditions went viral, Spann and Redding moved out, and Moore had to close her business.
“I don’t think they knew how much damage they did to hurt small businesses, but there were like, skits and acts that went according to how the mall looked, and how could a business be in there. So those really took and our sales started to really trickle,” Ressing said.
Over the years, competition from newer local malls and shopping centers drew customers away, and then the explosion of online shopping practically finished off Regency Square.
Now only a handful of stores and restaurants remain, and the mall is facing nearly $1.8 million in fines for multiple code violations as the property goes through a potential sale.
According to our news partners at the Jacksonville Daily Record, earlier this month, the city alerted prospective buyer Blackwater Development LLC, that inspectors found leaking and cracked ceilings, roof leaks, floor damage and unsanitary conditions.
The Record reported that Regency Realty LLC, a partnership of Mason Asset Management and Namdar Realty Group LLC, both based in Great Neck, New York, owns almost 74 acres and about 980,200 square feet of retail space in the mall.
Blackwater Development LLC of Lake City announced in October 2023 that it had a contract to buy the part of the mall that Namdar owns, which are the east and west wings of the mall, but not the Dillard’s Clearance Center in the west wing; the closed Sears at the end of that wing; or the central area that Impact Church now occupies that was once the Belk department store.
“I don’t know that it would ever be able to be a mall again. But I do think that it’s good real estate, and I think that where it’s located is very nostalgic and means a lot to so many people here locally in the city. And so I would love to really see somebody either acquire everything, including the land, and just breathe new life into it, to make something, you know, a community resource, or something along those lines,” Spann said.
Impact Church is concerned about how plans for redeveloping the mall could impact their portion of the building and the church has taken the owners to court over it.
The city has also sued Regency Realty LLC for a little over $1,000 because it failed to pay citations.
The court has also ordered Love Yourself Salon to pay more than $35,000 to Regency Mall Realty LLC, which sued the store owners, who failed to appear in court.
