VCB DIRECTORHere’s an updated list of people who have applied for the Visitors-Convention Bureau director job:

n Rainie Aucoin: Citrus County teacher from August 2016 to the present; formerly a self-employed business/marketing manager for Bangor Street Auto in Maine.

n Jessica Banchs: Destination sales manager with the Arlington Convention & Visitors Service in

EDC DIRECTORHere’s an updated list of Economic Development Director applicants:

n Bradly Broadwell: Planning position with Landarc Inc., a property management company in Cary, North Carolina.

n Frank Calascione: Business development manager with CareerSource Citrus Levy Marion from June 2009 to the present; lives in Homosassa.

n October 1990 — The Edward J. DeBartolo Corp., at the time the most successful shopping mall developer in the U.S., opens the $60 million Crystal River Mall. It is billed as a prototype small community mall, with three anchors — Belk, Sears and Kmart. The mall’s unusual feature — a 65-foot high, tent-like fabric roof.

n 1992 — JCPenney becomes the fourth anchor.

n 2006 — Simon Properties LLC purchases the Crystal River Mall. Simon had merged with DeBartolo in 1998.

n 2009 — Simon closes the mall office and stops virtually all upkeep.

n 2011 — Wells Fargo Bank of Minnesota forecloses on Simon’s $16.3 million mortgage. The court appoints a receiver, Boxer Property of Dallas, Texas.

n 2012 — Kohan Retail Investment Group of Great Neck, New York, buys the mall for $2.8 million. Its principal owner is

Mike Kohan, who also goes by Mike Kohen and Mehran Kohansieh. That same year, Sears closes.n 2013 — JCPenney closes.n 2014 — Belk closes. Also, Rural King buys the old Sears space for $775,000 and opens its store.n May 2016 — County, city issue notice of violations to Kohan, citing, among other things, the presence of mold in the old JCPenney store.

The report also includes fire code and building code violations. Kohan issues a report that, he says, proves there is no mold danger in the mall.

n August 2016 — Georges Khalife, property manager for Arizona-based United Realty M.T.A. LLC, buys the mall.

n November 2016 — Khalife hires a contractor to remove the black grime from the mall’s tent roof and make it whiter and brighter.

n April 2017 — Kmart closes.— Mike Wright, Michael D. Bates

HURRICANE THOUGHTSCOMMISSIONERS SCOTT CARNAHAN

AND JIMMIE T. SMITH THANK RESIDENTS

90 70SEPTEMBER 24, 2017 VOLUME 123 · ISSUE 48 · $1chronicleonline.com

INDEXClassifieds ...............D6

Crossword .............A22Excursions ...............A4

Editorial....................C2Entertainment ........A4

Lottery Numbers .... B3Lottery Payouts ...... B3

Movies ...................A22Obituaries ...............A6

TV Listings ............A22Veterans Notes ....A21

Weather ...................A4Week in Review .....A2

CRYSTAL RIVER MALL TIMELINE

Venue continues rebound under new ownership

Home & Outdoor show Sept. 30Learn from professionals

how to plan and execute your next home improve-ment project at the Citrus County Chronicle Fall Home and Outdoor Show from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 30.

Experts in a variety of home construction fields such as flooring, tile pavers, landscaping, painting, roof-ing, plumbing and pest con-trol, will be on hand at the National Guard Armory on Venable Street in Crystal River to offer tips on prod-ucts, services and home im-provement ideas.

Home ownership and im-provement education classes will also be avail-able at 9:45, 10:30. 11:15 and noon.

For information, call 352-563-5592 or visit chronicle online.com/contests.

DCF to hire 200 temp workers

OCALA — As a result of Hurricane Irma, the Florida Department of Children and Families is hiring 200 tem-porary workers for the Ocala call center to support the Disaster Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Pro-gram (SNAP).

CareerSource Citrus Levy Marion and Manpower have teamed up to help DCF identify and recruit candidates during a three-day hiring event from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sept. 27-29 at Ca-reerSource CLM’s career center, 2703 NE 14th St., in Ocala.

Data entry clerks will pro-cess Food for Florida emer-gency food assistance applications for five weeks, six days a week. Full and part-time positions are avail-able. Pay is $12 an hour.

Applicants do not need to have a high school diploma or GED but data entry expe-rience is required. The suc-cessful candidate must also pass a level 2 criminal background check.

Interested candidates must register at www. employflorida.com prior to attending the hiring event. Complete job details are also available at Employ Florida (Job Order 10555031).

For information, call 352-840-5700, ext. 1790, or 800-434-5627.

—From staff reports

CRYSTAL RIVER MALL

Michael D. Bates staff writer

CRYSTAL RIVER

One year ago, Ben Davis opened his Sea The Source lifestyle shop in-side the Crystal

River Mall and immediately got a taste of how frustrated other tenants were.

“I was moving in and there were like 13 people moving out,” Davis said.

It was enough to make him question whether he was doing the right thing by leasing a space at a mall that seemed perched on a precarious preci-pice. The place suffered a pub-lic relations nightmare in May 2016 when a mold problem at the vacant JCPenney was brought to light. Frustration with the previous owner led to tenant defections.

It was not a happy time.Today, Davis is glad he

made the move. Business, while not great, has steadily improved and he hopes for even better days once word gets out that he’s there and empty storefronts are filled.

“The longer I’m here, the better I’ll do,” he said. “Peo-ple here really want this mall to be successful. The shop-pers here are loyal.”

See MALL/Page A5

STEVE LASKO/Chronicle fileDerek Fontenot with Back2Bright Structural Soft Washing cleans the woven PVC roof of the Crystal River Mall’s food court in one of the improvement projects taken on in the past year.

COMING SOONn The Crystal River Mall

is getting two new tenants in October:

l Basagna, which features glass artwork

l Work It Out Gym

County ready to parse candidates for two director positions

Failing charter schools have a reincarnation plan Michael D. Bates

Staff writer

Citrus County is seeking to fill two im-portant posts: director of the Visitors- Convention Bureau and economic development.

To date, 29 have applied for the VCB job and 32 for the latter.

The county is not accepting any fur-ther applications for VCB director at this time. Instead, interviews are being

conducted. If nobody fits the bill, the position will be re-advertised.

No interviews are occurring for eco-nomic development director at this time and the ad is still out there.

Adam Thomas submitted his resigna-tion in August as Visitors Bureau direc-tor. The salary range for the position is $53,275 to $79,925. Thomas, who made $59,639 annually, took the same job with

Editor’s note: This story was co- published by ProPublica and Slate.

annie WalDManProPublica

This past June, Florida’s top educa-tion agency delivered a failing grade to the Orange Park Performing Arts Acad-emy in suburban Jacksonville for the second year in a row. It designated the charter school for kindergarten through fifth grade as the worst public school in Clay County, and one of the lowest per-forming in the state.

Two-thirds of the academy’s students failed the state exams last year, and only a third of them were making any academic progress at all. The school had had four principals in three years, and teacher turnover was high, too.

“My fourth grader was learning stuff that my second grader was learning — it shouldn’t be that way,” said Tanya Bullard, who moved her three daugh-ters from the arts academy this past summer to a traditional public school.

“The school has completely failed me and my children.”

The district terminated the acade-my’s charter contract. Surprisingly, Or-ange Park didn’t shut down — and even found a way to stay on the public dime. It reopened last month as a private school charging $5,000 a year, below the $5,886 maximum that low-income stu-dents receive to attend the school of their choice under a state voucher pro-gram. Academy officials expect all of its students to pay tuition with the publicly backed coupons.

Reverend Alesia Ford-Burse, an Afri-can Methodist Episcopal pastor who founded the academy, told ProPublica that the school deserves a second chance, because families love its dance and art lessons, which they otherwise couldn’t afford. “Kids are saying, ‘F or not, we’re staying,’” she said.

n n nWhile it’s widely known that private

schools convert to charter status to take

See CHARTER/Page A8 See VCB/Page A7 See EDC/Page A7

See DIRECTOR/Page A7

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