FPL shuts off power to Seminole Towne Center for not paying bill
Most of the Seminole Towne Center — a once-bustling upscale mall in Sanford, now mostly quiet and vacant — remained closed for the second day in a row on Friday after the property owners failed to pay the electricity bill.
A Florida Power & Light spokesperson said in an email to the Sentinel that shutting down the power was not an easy decision.
“Disconnection for non-payment is and always has been a last resort,” said Chris Curtland. “While FPL doesn’t take lightly the decision to turn off anyone’s power, we must treat all customers fairly given unpaid electric bills are ultimately paid for by all our customers in the form of higher rates.”
Even so, the big-box anchor stores at the mall — including Dick’s Sporting Goods, JCPenney, Dillards and Elev8 Fun — remained open and with the lights on. Those businesses are on separate power connections.
Mehran Kohansieh, of Great Neck, N.Y., a representative of the Towne Center’s owner, Seminole Mall Realty Holdings, said Friday he was surprised that the mall had not yet re-opened.
“As far as I know, those issues have been resolved according to my understanding,” he said, without providing any additional information.
Mary Stapf, owner of the Winey Wench, a gift shop and wine store that offers art classes, could not get into her 11,000-square-foot business inside the mall on Thursday and Friday.
“We’re beyond frustrated,” she said while sitting in her car in the empty mall parking lot. “There has been no communication to the businesses about this. They haven’t told any of us anything.”
Stapf has owned the Winey Wench for more than a decade, filling in an old Victoria’s Secret space. But now she worries the two dozen customers who signed up for her painting classes this weekend will find the mall doors locked.
A sign taped to the glass doors on Friday read: “We will be closed today. Sorry for the inconvenience.”
Meanwhile, mall customer Ross Dickinson walked back to his car disappointed that he would not be able to enjoy lunch at the food court while on break from his nearby office job.
“I feel bad for the businesses,” he said. “I’m new to the area, and I came here a week ago, and the gyro place was pretty good, so I thought I’d try it again today.”
A mall employee who did not want to be identified said he saw FP&L workers arrive on the property just south of State Road 46 around 9 a.m. Thursday, roughly two hours before the mall was scheduled to open.
When the Seminole Towne Center opened in the mid-1990s, its high-end anchor stores — including Burdines, Parisian and later Macy’s — were filled with well-heeled shoppers from the nearby affluent communities of Heathrow and Alaqua.
Shoppers would cruise the mall’s vast parking lots searching for a rare empty spot during the holiday seasons.
In recent years, the fancy stores have left and more than two-thirds of the shop spaces inside the split-level mall sit dark and vacant. The parking lots are now vast deserts of asphalt. An adjacent movie theater shuttered its doors years ago.
The Seminole Towne Center, like many malls across the country, have become a casualty of online shopping. Also, dozens of new retail stores have sprouted around the mall just south of State Road 46 and east of Interstate 4.
The power bill isn’t the mall’s only issue. According to the Seminole County Tax Collector’s Office, Seminole Mall Realty Holdings has still not paid $717,559 in 2022 real estate taxes.
“I think it’s lived its life. It’s sad,” said Angela Robertson of the mall, as she shopped at the Dillards store on Friday. “But you got to pay your electric bill.”
