During the “Items of Information” portion at the end of Tuesday (Feb 20th) evening’s Danville City Council meeting; it was Alderman Jon Cooper, followed by Vice-Mayor Tricia Teague, who mentioned that Village Mall indoor family fun center JumpOff is being told by mall owner, AZT Corporation, that they must vacate their location, even though their lease is not up until the month of May.
NOTE: A phone call to the Tabani Group, identified by Mayor Williams as the owner of the Village Mall properties, brought a response that Tabani is the name of the owner, and AZT is the name of the corporation.
This brought about numerous negative feedback from the City Council, city personnel, and Mayor Rickey Williams, Jr. Mayor Williams mentioned that although AZT Corporation, is headquartered in Dallas, Texas; the actual owners live outside of the United States. And right now, there is very little communication between the city and the owners; and the one bit of communication over the last couple weeks was quite negative.
The City of Danville wanted to do a market feasibility study focusing on the south portion of the Village Mall. It would have been funded by the city; and as Community Development Administrator Logan Cronk points out, the whole idea was to really explore future possibilities for the use of the mall.
AUDIO: Going nationwide, seeing what other communities have done, with what the common trend is of these large scale malls. What are they turning them into? And what does our community need.
Alderman Ed Butler brought up the question of “could part of the mall be used for residential units?” Cronk answered “absolutely.” In fact, Cronk stated that anything other than industrial use would be possible.
AUDIO: We’ve actually seen examples across the country. From just market rate residential, all the way to health care types of residential situations; like dementia or alzheimer’s living situations. They can be very unique like that.
But Cronk says as soon as the city told AZT that the study usually takes six to eight months, and that the city would try to expedite the process, the owners told the city they would not participate in the study, and not cooperate by giving the city requested information. Mayor Williams says that in his eyes, that makes no sense at all.
AUDIO: If I were a business owner, and my business was struggling, and the city offered to spend $100,000 to help me figure out a better path forward, I would jump on that chance. So the fact that they have refused to partner with us is shocking, disappointing; and I think it’s downright disrespectful to the citizens of Danville and Vermilion County.
Mayor Williams says it was after AZT said no to the study that they served JumpOff with an eviction notice.
A call has been placed to AZT Corporation’s marketing office.
