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NAPLES SHOPPING
8 November 2024
Once the top shopping draw in Collier County, 48-year-old Coastland Center mall in Naples has fallen into disrepair and its management company faces at least $42,500 in fines that continue to accrue for failing to maintain the 36.2-acre property. Fines assessed at a January hearing for trash, debris, weeds, overgrown and dead vegetation and crumbling asphalt had accrued at $250 daily from May 8 to Oct. 24 after a Feb. 7 order demanded that three violations be fixed, one within 45 days and others within 90 days. Mall management was ordered to cut grass and weeds that exceeded eight inches, trim bushes and vegetation that encroached onto sidewalks and remove dead plants to come into compliance with its 2016 landscape plan. Landscapers added mulch and cleaned some areas within 45 days, but other violations remained. “It wasn’t the team ignoring the violations or not trying,” said Rick Jackson, Coastland Center’s general manager, noting that management had gone through several hurricanes and three landscapers. “The lender was controlling our budget and we simply just had to stick with what they would fund us.” He referred to a $114.5 million mortgage for the 1998 purchase by Coastland Center Joint Venture. He and the mall’s attorney assured the board the new landscaper signed a sworn affidavit promising to fully restore the property by Nov. 24. Jackson said a landscaper is now onsite daily, “so you should never see that property coming out of compliance again.” Opened in 1976, Coastland Center was originally anchored by Sears and Maas Brothers, a Tampa-based department store that opened Feb. 3, 1977. Over the years, the mall underwent two expansions and a change of ownership in 1998. It is now 950,000 square feet and anchored by Macy’s, JCPenney and Dillard’s. The mall’s problems began in summer 2023; violations involving grass and shrubs were corrected immediately, so it wasn’t fined for that. But problems persisted and the city cited the mall in November, prompting the January hearing. Photographs showed old, broken asphalt, overgrown bushes and vegetation encroaching onto sidewalks and trash strewn on the property, including entrances on Good-lette Frank Road, Ninth Street North and Fleischmann Boulevard. “There is notable improvement at Coastland Mall,” Bill Quinsey, the city’s code compliance manager, told the board, calling it a “difficult situation. One of the improvements is that you have a general manager on site … so we do have some local interest in the property.” Quinsey explained that the problems involved funding and decisions at the corporate level, Chicago-based Brookfield Properties Retail Group, which manages the property. Jackson, a Brookfield employee, said he took over in mid-March, when he learned of the landscaping issues and fines. He discovered problems began before Hurricane Ian, when its long-term landscaper retired and the mall began seeking a new landscaper. But then Hurricane Ian hit. “We lost a lot of vegetation and had...