BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) – If the name City Lights has sort of an appealing familiarity to it, that’s because it’s the name of a famous silent movie and also a legendary San Francisco bookstore. Now, it’s also the name of a new, $120 million commercial development that could turn what we once knew as East Hills Mall into the sort of place east Bakersfield has long needed. Southern California developer-investors Michael Heslov and Stephen Zimmerman paid $7.2 million for the 36-acre property in June 2021 and over the next year scraped the land clean.  But they didn’t have a specific plan for it. Now they do. And Heslov is convinced it will be transformative. “It's going to enhance the area,” Heslov said. “It's going to bring in more traffic to that northeast, sort of, central core area. We've acquired a couple other pieces in that northeast area because we're really bullish on it. So, I think it's going to regenerate the whole area.” $11.9 million secured for revitalization of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Park in Bakersfield In January 2023, the City of Bakersfield approved plans to allow a 346,500-square-foot retail and commercial center, and on Monday Vice Mayor Andrae Gonzales told the city’s Budget, Finance and Economic Development committee that City Lights was a go. It is tentatively set for opening in 2026. Tenants have not been made public, but we are told City Lights will be similar to the Shops at Riverwalk. “East Bakersfield deserves nice things,” Gonzales said, “and East Bakersfield deserves a new East Hills Mall, or a new vision, an iteration of East Hills Mall. And what the developers are presenting and proposing looks really exciting and I commend them, I commend council member Ken Weir, for all of their efforts along with city staff. East Hills Mall was an indoor center that comprised around 450,000 square feet of retail space. City Lights, a predominately outdoor center, will have 23% less square footage – on the same 36-acre pad – largely because it will have so much more common walkable outdoor space. That’s a reflection of the way the thinking has changed when it comes to shopping malls, Haslov said. At least in the West, indoor malls are becoming somewhat less common. One thing we know it will not include is a residential component. The developers originally considered a mixed-use approach that would include multi-family housing – condos or apartments. Not anymore. This is going to be all about retail. “The feedback that we've gotten from the community and from the city and from the county is these people are dying for services up in that area,” Heslov said. “They've been dying for these services for a long time. They're underserved. The food uses are underserved. The softer uses are underserved. A nice market, a little higher-end market, is not there… So we're really bullish on it.” Might a sparkling new, pedestrian-friendly, amenity-rich outdoor shopping center prove detrimental to existing retailers in the area? Not necessarily, according to Gonzales. He says City Lights will raise the bar between Oswell Street and Mount Vernon Avenue. “We’ve talked a lot about the broken window theory, right?,” Gonzales said. “Where one broken window, one negative element, brings things down in the surrounding environment. Well, the inverse is also true. The fact that we have investments actually spurs lots of other investment in adjacent properties.” Heslov agrees that City Lights will make a difference. “It's going to enhance the area,” he said. “It's going to bring in more traffic to that northeast … core area. We've acquired a couple other pieces in that northeast area because we're really bullish on it. So I think it's going to regenerate the whole area.” City Lights might just have the potential to transform northeast Bakersfield beyond its immediate retail neighborhood. How many prospective home buyers have passed on opportunities to purchase property in the cooler rolling hills of east Bakersfield because of the relative dearth of shopping and entertainment. The consensus is plenty. East Hills Mall, initially developed by the Hahn Company in 1987, was once a bustling place, anchored by two now-defunct chains with Central Valley ties -- Gottchalks and Mervyns. After the last of its shops closed, it became an arsonist’s and skateboarder’s paradise. Its demolition didn’t just set the stage for something interesting, it rid the city of a public nuisance. Heslov said the project initially attracted the attention of several prospective retail tenants, including two movie theaters, but he noted the movie theater industry isn’t like it was just three years ago. “The movie business is going through such a transition,” he said. “We all know theaters are struggling. A number of them are going through bankruptcy, financial issues. We just all don't go to the theaters much we used to, because we don't have to. And theaters demand a lot of upfront money to build their spaces out, and it's a huge financial commitment on the developer side. You're sort of rolling the dice if they're going to be in business the next three or four years. And so it makes it difficult to finance.” L.A. developer Soboroff Partners, with whom Heslov sometimes works – although not on City Lights – recently sold another major shopping center, The Park at Cross Creek in Malibu, for $80 million. The retail center, which includes a Whole Foods Market, Blue Bottle Coffee and Howdy’s Sonrise Café among its tenants, came online in 2019. Might any of those tenants end up in Bakersfield? Impossible to know, but Halov did say City Lights will have an upscale grocery store. Whether that’s a Whole Foods, a Sprouts, a Trader Joe’s or something else, Haslov believes it will go well with upscale neighborhoods like Bakersfield Country Club and Rio Bravo within a short drive. One thing it won’t have, Haslov conceded: a Cheesecake Factory. The city sponsored a poll in 2023 that found broad community support for the popular chain, but nothing came of it – and apparently won’t anytime soon. City Lights will have fast food and fast-casual, but if it has contemporary casual or fine dining, those restaurants will likely have local ownership, Haslov said. The Malibu project took 12 years to come to fruition, owing largely to that city’s stringent development standards and imposed regulatory burdens. Bakersfield, in contrast, has been a pleasure to work with, Haslov said. “As difficult as Malibu was to work in … Bakersfield, it's been a pleasure,” he said. “The community is great. They're proactive, they're pro-development. The staff at the city is really helpful …. It's a nice change. Doing business in certain cities in southern California has become very, very very difficult. Bakersfield is the exception.” One complication that still must be worked out is Mall View Road – actually a private road over which the city has limited jurisdiction. The adjacent property owners own and manage Mall View Road, which is increasingly inadequate given the area’s commercial growth.  Vice Mayor Gonzales said something needs to be done. Never miss a story: Make KGET.com your homepage “Oftentimes Mall View Road feels very congested, feels a little dangerous, sometimes very hectic with the confluence of different vehicles coming in and out of parking lots,” Gonzales said. “So we have to do a better job at making Mall View Road far more accessible and far safer.” Does that mean widening Mall View Road? Adding a fifth turn lane? Making it a public rather than private road? Everything is on the table. The developers, as noted, are based in L.A., but Heslov proudly points out that he’s got a Bakersfield connection. His late grandfather, Saul Heslov, owned Ralph’s Shoes, located at 18th and Chester, in what is now Mamma Mia’s Italian restaurant. His late father, Doctor Arthur Heslov, D-D-S, was a 1951 Bakersfield High School graduate who played alongside NFL Hall of Fame running back-receiver Frank Gifford.  Heslov said he still has his father’s letterman’s sweater hanging in his closet. He has toyed with the idea of putting it on display behind a secure glass enclosure in the City Lights mall. So, for what it's worth, the L.A. based developers just might harbor a little extra hometown affection for the project, and that can’t hurt.