U City Mall, the actual enclosed mall portion, is now long gone. Demolition cleared the actual mall section away a couple of years ago after in became obvious re-development likely would not happen with the building falling into dis-repair after being rarely used since it was shut down. The anchor store spaces however remain.
The building that housed the Valley location of The Crescent is now only partly used by a private place called Group Photographers Association who acts primarily as a photo lab for youth sports photographers. The eastern end however has a few tenants including Rosauer's but it is in more of a strip mall type set up.
Towards the middle remains the last completely empty former anchor store of U City, the former JC Penney store. And, it looks like it won't be empty too much longer, although don't get too terribly excited as the tenant isn't a new store or a new restaurant, it's U Haul who appears to be planning on remodeling the structure into a large 3 story ( including basement ) indoor storage facility. This would likely be similar to U Haul's other indoor storage complex they own in Coeur d' Alene visible from I-90 near the US 95 exit.
They are currently still developing their plans but it appears they plan to use the entire building which has about 42,000 square feet of space on each floor. This would make way for many storage units of varying sizes all with interior rows allowing access to only those with clearance , an added security feature over the outdoor mini storage centers.
A 2000 square foot showroom area is also shown in the plans on the northeast side of building, likely to manage the storage units and probably to rent U Haul trucks. The southwest side of the building also features a 4500 +/- square foot space for U Haul's U Box program which is similar to Pods. The U Box boxes would be stacked 2 high by employees in this small warehouse area.
We'll keep an eye on this project and also noteworthy is U City's site is also becoming the home of the Spokane Valley city hall with that building under construction and starting to look pretty nice. We'll have more on that likely in the future.
For more information on U Haul and the services they already offer at a handful of locations around Spokane, visit their web site at-
http://www.uhaul.com
