Northridge Owners Renew Legal Battle With City

The owners of the long-vacant Northridge Mall won’t lose their case against the city because of a lack of legal representation.

The China-based U.S. Black Spruce Enterprise Group is now represented by attorney Christopher M. Kloth, a partner at McDonald & Kloth.

The mall owner is fighting the City of Milwaukee’s effort to demolish and possibly seize the shuttered mall. But attorneys from von Briesen & Roper withdrew from the case in May, citing an undisclosed failure by U.S. Black Spruce Enterprise Group to meet its contractual obligations under a 2019 agreement.

In April 2019, city officials gathered outside the mall to announce a plan to issue a raze order on the property, a potential precursor to acquiring the property. Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge William Pocan ruled in the city’s favor in a 2020 trial, but Black Spruce appealed the ruling.

In March, the Wisconsin Appeals Court sent the case back down to the circuit court. In a written decision, it said Pocan improperly ruled that the cost to repair the buildings should be based on what was needed to open them to the public, instead of more limited repairs to maintain the buildings as vacant. The mall has been closed since 2003.

A brief status conference case was held Thursday, with Kloth representing Black Spruce. The case is now before Judge William Sosnay.

The next hearing in the case is scheduled for Aug. 15.

The city’s defense hasn’t been without its own representation issues. Assistant city attorney Nicole Larsen was the original attorney on the case, but she left city employment, then returned earlier this year to become the assessment commissioner. Contract attorney Lynnette McNeely is now handling the case, but is also named in a complaint filed with the city’s inspector general regarding her hiring and relationship with now-former special deputy attorney Celia Jackson.

State law allows a raze order to be issued when repair costs exceed 50% of the building’s value. The Department of Neighborhood Services estimates repairs would cost $6 million and the attached buildings are only assessed for $81,000. The underlying 46.5 acres of land are assessed at more than $2 million.

Black Spruce acquired the approximately 900,000-square-foot complex for $6 million in 2008 and announced a plan to develop an Asian marketplace, but those plans have never progressed in any substantial fashion, city officials contend. DNS officials say the roof is failing, scrappers have illegally stripped many of the mechanical systems and the masonry is in disrepair.

A maintenance worker was killed by a high-voltage transformer in an electrical box at the mall in July 2019. The electrical box was previously damaged by scrappers said the Milwaukee Police Department. Area Alderwoman Chantia Lewis, in 2019, said a legally-filmed, 2017 video inspired a wave of vandalism and trespassing.

Images were posted to Instagram earlier this month showing comedian and Kia Boyz documentarian Tom Gerszewski and others standing inside the derelict mall.

Should the city acquire the mall, it could merge the land from the mall with land freed up from demolishing the attached former Boston Store building.

Bill Penzey, owner of Penzey’s Spices, bought the former Boston Store building in 2013 and attempted to acquire the rest of the mall, with the support of the city, for a corporate headquarters and warehouse for his company. He wasn’t able to reach a deal on acquiring the mall and donated the Boston Store property to the city in 2018. The city also acquired the ring road that surrounds the mall.

The mall opened in 1972. Northridge failed for a number of reasons, including a lack of direct freeway access, chain bankruptcies, the cyclical nature of malls and a negative perception created following Jesse Anderson‘s murder of his wife in a mall parking lot and subsequent false claim that the couple was attacked by two Black males. The mall’s competitors, including Mayfair, Brookfield Square, Southridge and Bayshore, have all received substantial public subsidies to help finance updates in the years since Northridge closed.

Menards and Pick ‘n Save were brought in as new retail anchors after the mall closed, but Pick ‘n Save closed in 2015. Those buildings are not included in the Black Spruce property, nor are the outlet buildings. Menards is now pursuing redevelopment of the Pick ‘n Save property.

2019 Photos