COLUMBUS – In the end, two very different factors may determine Westland Mall’s final downfall: thieves and the weather.
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“The copper thieves came through this summer and just robbed us blind,” said Nick Vollman, vice president of commercial leasing for Plaza Properties, which owns much of the 70-acre mall. “People keep breaking in. It’s a mess.”
So much copper has been stripped from the mostly vacant mall that it no longer has electricity or, for that matter, heat. That’s a problem, because approaching cold weather is likely to freeze and break the sprinkler system, rendering Westland Mall a fire hazard as well as an eyesore.
Officials from Plaza and Franklin Township met on Tuesday to discuss Westland’s future. The West Side fixture, which opened to a mob of shoppers in 1969 and now contains just a single store, could be either demolished or partially torn down. (Sears, which owns its property in the mall, is monitoring the developments but staying open as it has for 46 years, a spokesman said.)
“We knew it was going to be an issue,” Vollman said of the approaching winter. “Sooner or later, it’s going to happen.”
They’re still working out a solution. Repairing the electricity, a fix estimated to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, is out of the question, Vollman said. So is immediate demolition, which would cost at least $1.5 million, unless a plan is in place to develop the property afterward.