Will this be the Mission Gateway plan that finally succeeds? The public can weigh in

City Administrator Laura Smith and Mayor Sollie Flora take turns tracing their fingers along a pinned Mission city map, circling around the bottom right corner where the on-again, off-again Mission Gateway construction lies.

“Hence the name Gateway. I mean, as you come into our community from the east, it is truly the first gateway entrance,” Smith said.

Mission residents have waited 16 years for progress to be made on the vacant site of the former Mission Center Mall, which was demolished in 2006.

Construction of an entertainment complex, food hall, shops, apartments and offices finally began in 2020 after years of delays. But it abruptly stopped amid the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Contractors then filed at least a dozen liens against the developer claiming they were not paid for their work. And in June 2021, the developer was in default after failing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in property taxes. The semi-completed structures at the site have remained vacant since.

“I think there’s a shared frustration between the governing body and the public just on the length of this process,” Flora said. “We hear from the public and they should know that we’re listening and we sympathize. We’re residents as well and so it impacts us, too.”

The developer came back to Mission’s City Council with a new tax increment financing plan in June after the previous agreement expired on Dec. 31, 2021. The first step in the process was completed when Mission’s planning commission reviewed and approved the latest plan development and land use objectives.

On Aug. 17, the city council passed two resolutions calling for a public hearing to discuss the TIF redevelopment project plan and a community improvement district. The meeting will be at 6:30 p.m. Sept. 28 at the Powell Community Center.

“This is the opportunity for the public to come and voice any comments, concerns that they might have about the project,” Smith said. “When we get to the 28th, both the council and the public will have a much clearer sense of what’s truly being considered, and then we’ll have the opportunity to bring all of that forward for council consideration.”

The latest plan is similar to the last one, but with more apartments and scaled back versions of a food hall and retail. It calls for a mixed-use center consisting of approximately 139,752 square feet of small shop retail, restaurants and entertainment, a 100,000-square-foot office or medical facility, a 202-room hotel and about 370 multi-family residential units, as well as a parking garage, according to the Mission website.

Developer Tom Valenti, with The Cameron Group of New York, proposes the project be constructed in two phases. The first phase would include everything but the hotel and office space, which would be built after the first phase opens to the public. Construction would not begin until late in the first quarter of 2023 at the earliest.

“Stay tuned in the next 30 days because there’s a lot more that will be finalized or become clearer about the future of the project,” Smith said.