A stall for the Charlestowne Mall

Black shroud-like sheets hang behind metal cages with no illumination. Sometimes there is a Chicago Bulls jersey or other highlighted sale item in a display window, but they all belong to the other shops in St. Charles' Charlestowne Mall that still have life. There are not as many shoppers as one might expect in a post-holiday sale shopping season. Then again, there aren't as many stores as one would expect for an 850,000 square-foot mall.

More than 40 vacant storefronts darken the Charlestowne Mall these days.

Up until about the middle of 2008, it looked like a resurrection would be in the immediate future of the mall. St. Charles Mayor Don DeWitte, at the time, spoke anxiously about a reconfiguration of the potential sales tax juggernaut into an open-air format similar to Geneva Commons. With it was to come a change in ownership and a brand new start for the struggling property. Those plans fell off the table in 2008 right about the same time the economy bottomed out.

"I have nothing new to report on any ownership changes," DeWitte said in a recent interview with the Daily Herald. "I'm told the situation has all been exacerbated by the current banking fiasco. I haven't seen anything concrete about the open-air concept. No one is more anxious on trying to resolve the ownership over there than me. But the banking industry needs to shake itself loose first."

When that happens a chain reaction could be set in motion. The mall property right now is held in a trust, along with some other assets, as a result of the mall falling into a financial morass. A bank holds the paper on the mall, while Michigan-based McKinley manages the property. Matt Mason, a director of sales and acquisitions for McKinley, said the mall is set to come out of the trust in 2009. Until that happens, any major changes are unlikely as trustees can't effectuate a full redevelopment of the property. Once out of the trust, the most-likely scenario is a sale of the property assuming the financial sector has rebounded and a buyer can rake together the funds to make it happen.

In the meantime, Mason said McKinley continues to work with current tenants to keep the mall alive. That doesn't mean there's not some relationships to rebuild.

Many store owners inside the mall wouldn't speak openly about the condition of the mall, but repeated a rumor causing ill will among some of the smaller retail shops that the anchor stores have been told they don't have to pay rent any more just so they'll stay. Others, such as the Wall of Fame sports memorabilia store packed up and left after feeling the mall management just wasn't interested in keeping foot traffic filling the hallways.

Mason said none of that is true. Kohl's and Von Maur actually own the property their stores sit on. So it's true they don't pay rent. All the other anchor stores still lease their space and pay rent as they always have, Mason said.

As far as foot traffic and empty space, Mason said McKinley has done all it can to change those problems.

"We're actively trying to keep as many tenants at the mall as possible," Mason said. "The stores that have left, we made them very aggressive proposals to keep them."