Evolution of Sarasota's new $315 million mall 'pretty wild' to watch unfold
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Oct 13, 2014

Less than a week before its grand opening, Mall at University Town Center was a bit chaotic on Friday.

The 880,000-square-foot mall was still an active construction zone, and retailers were receiving inventory and building storefront displays.

But the person at the helm, General Manager Octavio Ortiz III, wasn't nervous. The mall's ownership, Michigan-based Taubman Centers, had sent in 36 people from all facets of its operations elsewhere to assist with the grand opening.

"It always comes together,” he said, "and we'll be ready for Oct. 16.” Mall at UTC is the first enclosed shopping mall to open in the U.S. since 2012, when Taubman opened City Creek Center in Salt Lake City. The $315 million mall was developed in partnership with Sarasota-based Benderson Development. The mall opens to the public on Thursday, though the anchors and restaurants held soft opening events over the weekend.

Ortiz has been on-site for more than a year, when his office was a construction trailer. Preparation for the mall's opening has been busy, to say the least, but he knows that work really begins on Oct. 16, when the customers arrive, and mall employees will learn as they go to adapt and react to new situations.

About two weeks later, after Halloween, the mall will put up its holiday decorations. Basically, Ortiz will blink, and it will be New Year's Day.

But he's excited to see how the mall performs - it's filling in a hole in Taubman's Central Florida doughnut, so to speak, given its location between Tampa's International Plaza, Naples' Waterside Shops and Orlando's Mall at Millenia.

"We know this market, and we know this is a soft spot,” Ortiz said, "and it really is going to become a major destination.”

And while Benderson is no stranger to retail development - in the immediate area surrounding the mall alone, it's developed more than 1 million square feet - the mall is a new venture for the company, said Todd Mathes, director of development for Benderson.

"We do everything increment by increment,” he said. "We've certainly never seen 800,000 square feet open at once. It's pretty wild to watch it open. All of our managers walk the mall maybe once every 12 hours. That's how frequently you see change inside the mall.”

Ashley Gurbal Kritzer is a reporter for the Tampa Bay Business Journal.