Nordstrom Eyes Move From Aurora Village

The beleaguered Aurora Village shopping center will probably lose Nordstrom, its only remaining tenant, sometime this year.

Still, Aurora Village's developer and owner, Pan Pacific Corp., is not ready to give up on the center. "We're struggling to figure out where (it) goes from here," said Tom Sroufe, Pan Pacific senior vice president. A much-stalled renovation plan remains in limbo, he said, but the site is not for sale yet.

Nordstrom alerted its employees last week that the store could close sometime this year, said Susan Alsup, a Nordstrom spokeswoman.

The employee notification was a courtesy to workers. No official closing date has been set, Alsup said. All 100 employees would be offered jobs at other Nordstrom stores, she said.

Nordstrom would have liked to remain open, Alsup said. But because the mall's renovation has been delayed so long, Nordstrom has been operating as a stand-alone store.

"We're not happy about it, but we can't blame them. . . . It's hard to ask Nordstrom to operate as a free-standing store," Sroufe said. Although Pan Pacific and Nordstrom have discussed the possible closing, Sroufe said, the development company hasn't been notified officially.

In September, Aurora Village - which was already nearly vacant - lost its other major anchor, Frederick & Nelson. The F&N closing came at a particularly bad time for the center. Pan Pacific has been trying to find financing for a long-delayed redevelopment of the shopping center. Before F&N closed, Sroufe said Pan Pacific had secured all the equity financing and more than half the cost of construction. "We were well on our way to beginning construction," he said. When F&N closed, "everything else slipped away, too," he said.

Pan Pacific has filed a claim for financial damages against F&N, charging that F&N's abrupt pull-out resulted in considerable losses to the developer. The claim is part of F&N's bankruptcy, Sroufe said, so it is not likely to be settled any time soon.

Both F&N and Nordstrom had been waiting for the planned Aurora Village renovation.The redevelopment wasscheduled to begin the first of last year. A lack of financing kept the $100 million project on hold.