Simon Property Group Gives Up On Circle Centre Mall

The IBJ's Scott Olson out scooped the business reporters for the Gannett-owned Indianapolis Star when he reported on his blog, Property Lines, that management for the newspaper was in discussions with Simon Property Group to lease part of the space formerly occupied by Nordstrom's in Circle Centre Mall for its new location. The newspaper's publisher Karen Crotchfelt later confirmed in a note on the company's website after Olson's report that the negotiations were taking place. The Star is looking for much smaller digs as it continues its dramatic downsizing.

The Indianapolis Star has been in a downward spiral since Gannett purchased the newspaper from the Pulliam family, which broke the supposedly unbreakable family trust Eugene Pulliam had established in order to cash out of the newspaper business. Gannett dumped the newspaper's most talented employees and replaced them primarily with people who have absolutely no connection to Indianapolis and know nothing about the community. Subscribers have left the paper in droves as the content and quality of the newspaper has suffered.

The planned move of the newspaper's staff into the former space occupied by Nordstrom's spells the end of the mall that Indianapolis taxpayers and a few downtown businesses like the Star's former parent company built as a gift to the billionaire Simon family. Although the number of residents living in and around the downtown area has grown dramatically since the mall first opened its doors back in the 1990s, many people stay away from it because of the roaming mobs of unsupervised, menacing teens who flock to it and bring with them the crime that follows in their footsteps. With Simon Property Group's own investment in the mall so minimal, it could care less whether the mall remains opens. It doesn't exactly fit the meme of the Star's editors who insist continued subsidies to the Simon-owned Indiana Pacers is critical to downtown's future, but nothing they argue makes much sense. They have the audacity to argue the move will help rejuvenate the vacant corner downtown. Hah.