So, this is the reason you can't tear down malls.

Back when everyone was freaking out about the mallpocolypse, I was the only one saying - calm down. This is going to be completely okay. Dead malls are going to be gobbled up by new houses or condos with a mixed use retail/residential purpose. I even wrote a post in March titled - Let them die already!

Then the blog had a thread about how some old malls never get torn down. I speculated it was because of the environemental problems that come with old malls. i.e. asbestos.

Turns out - it's just asshole old people.

Go back in your time machine to 2008. California used to have a clothing chain called Mervyns. They basically got taken out in a combination of the recession and a venture capitalist orgy. Here.

Their real estate has been little idle for a decade including their headquarters in Hayward Ca.

These properties sit for so long, you just think there is no interest. But you'd be wrong. Apparently developers have been trying for many years to redevolope that property. But old people keep suing them to stop it! And this is what the old people are saying to try and stop this.

"A group of Hayward residents are seeking to block a mixed-use project on the former Mervyn’s headquarters site by claiming developers did not adequately resolve lingering environmental concerns before city approvals were granted. 

The May 24 lawsuit, filed by the Hayward Smart Growth Coalition in Alameda County Superior Court against Dollinger Properties, alleges that a state-required environmental report on the Lincoln Landing retail and residential development failed to “identify, evaluate, and/or require mitigation for all direct, indirect and cumulative environmental impacts the project will foreseeably cause.”

Emphasis mine. And let me tell you, they buried this fact so hard that I really had to do some digging to find this out. Who are these assholes? Busy bodies. I ran across more articles about people being upset that the homeless were going to be tossed out of that mall, than the fact that this group has been blocking this development.

"The Hayward Smart Growth Coalition is described in the lawsuit as a group of residents and property owners “advocating for equitable and responsible land use development policies, maintaining political accountability by elected local officials and enforcing land use planning and environmental laws in and around Hayward.” Its members include Hayward residents Desirae Schmidt, Evangelina Mares, Frank Rasberry, Janet Nielsen and Sandra Macias, according to the lawsuit. 

The lawsuit claims many of the group’s members “will suffer direct harm as a result of any adverse environmental and/or public health impacts caused by the project.”

Source.

These asshole would rather put up with the blight of a dead mall and the problems such a thing would cause (i.e.) homeless, than let a company build houses for people who need them. And then everyone wonders why housing to so effing expensive!