Last Monday evening at a meeting of the Goodyear, AZ City Council, it was announced that the Estrella Falls Regional Mall was being delayed for the fourth time. The plan is to build the 1.2 million square-foot mall on a now empty (except for the agriculture crops growing there) tract of land between I-10 and McDowell. The City approved it in 2006 and has already put in the roads and the street-lights for it, and the mall was supposed to be up and running by now. But in 2008, with the Bush Depression looming, it was decided that the mall would be delayed. Earlier this year, it appeared that the project was finally about to start so that it would be open for the 2014 Christmas shopping season. Apparently that is now not the case.
According to the West Valley View the developer (Macerich - formerly Westcor of Santa Monica, CA) is citing the economy as the reason, but read the money quote from Macerich Vice President of Development Garrett Newland:
The economy, unfortunately, continues to be the problem. Our major retailers are telling us there's no question about the location. However, timing-wise for them to commit, in some cases millions of dollars in a new ground-up mall ... anywhere in this market is going to be a challenge at least for a period of time... Wall Street and retail are still looking at Arizona with less than perfect eyes and they're going to need to continue to see retail growth before they're going to be able to commit to any new project in the Phoenix area. All of the negative publicity that Arizona has gotten nationally in the media, Wall Street Journal and all the other publications you can imagine they still focus on that negative article... We're constantly battling that when we meet with retailers. It is a constant battle we're fighting.
(emphasis mine)
Arpaio is popular, but a former Goodyear assistant police chief, John Rowan (a Democrat), has just announced that he will be challenging Arpaio later this year. You can help him out at http://www.rowanreform2012.com/.