The new owners of the ailing Post Falls Factory Outlets retail center say they have renewed leases with half of the tenants there, are in the midst of negotiations with several potential new tenants, and plan to reconstruct a sign next to Interstate 90 in an effort to attract passing motorists.


Many people in the local community think the place is dead, says Rick Cordes, a California businessman, who, along with another California real-estate professional, Gary Patterson, headed up a group of investors who bought the shopping center last February. Were trying to turn the corner there, and hopefully surprise people with its success.


Cordes, who is president of Cordes Commercial Inc., of Walnut Creek, Calif., says the investment group plans to own the shopping center for the long term, but wont bring about changes there overnight.


He says the tenants at the shopping center have been on month-to-month leases and many had planned to move out based on their relationships with the prior owner, Prime Retail Inc., of Baltimore, Md. He says hes in the process of securing leases with as many of those tenants as possible to build momentum. About eight tenants have renewed their leases.


One of the changes that former and current tenants requested was a stronger commitment to a retail theme and the removal of nonretail tenants from the 180,000-square-foot complex, Cordes says. The previous owners had allowed two churches, a health club, a karate studio, and a shipping company to rent space there. The retail tenants complained that those occupants detracted from the centers overall retail theme and discouraged shoppers from coming to the outlets, he says. Those tenants have been asked to leave.


Some of those businesses were good tenants, but we need to focus on building the retail there, Cordes says.


He says the investment group is aggressively marketing to categories of tenants that it has brought into other outlet centers it owns. Those categories include athletic apparel such as Nike brand clothing, sportswear stores such as Eddie Bauer, mens clothing outlets such as Ralph Lauren Polo, and kitchen-ware retailers. He also says that hes talking with several larger, trendy home-furnishing stores.


The retail center includes two buildings that face each other on either side of Riverbend Avenue. A 110,000-square-foot structure backs up to I-90, and a 70,000-square-foot building is located to the south.


While the investment group intends to focus on an outlet theme, future retail anchor tenants might not be outlet stores, he says.


About 126,000 square feet of floor space at the shopping center is available for lease, and Cordes says he can put together any combination of spaces there for occupants. He hopes to lease out 36,000 square feet of space to new shops by the end of the year. He believes that many new occupants collectively could employ 40 to 50 more people and bring the center up to being half-occupied.


By the end of 2006, he hopes that the center will be 80 percent occupied. His first goal is to bring the building closest to I-90 to maximum occupancy.


He says he has met with consultants about the colors, signs, and visual impact of the center, and has found that the exterior style of the buildings generally is well-received. He plans to reconstruct the Post Falls Factory Outlets sign, adding six, two-sided panels that display the tenants names.


The main obstacle to reviving the shopping center is the negative image it has acquired in the Spokane-North Idaho area, Cordes says. The decline against the U.S. dollar of the Canadian dollar, which now is making a comeback, and the opening of a Wal-Mart store in Post Falls also contributed to the centers decline, he says. Yet, he says hes excited about the growing economy in the Post Falls area and hopes that growth will benefit the outlet stores.


Cordes says 3 acres of additional land are available at the site, and the group plans to develop shops or restaurants there in three to five years.


He says Post Falls Factory Outlets is the investment groups first shopping center in Idaho. Suburban markets in the Pacific Northwest region currently are more attractive for those undertakings than the San Francisco bay area, where Cordes and Patterson have their offices. The land there is overdeveloped and overpopulated, he says. The investors various partnerships own and manage more than 30 commercial retail centers in the west, including an outlet center in Bend, Ore., he says.