What’s going on at Southtown in Bloomington? Demolition has started for possible redevelopment.

Wrecking equipment began to tear into the Herberger’s and Toys ‘R’ Us buildings in Bloomington on Tuesday. The two buildings in the Southtown Shopping Center have been vacant for more than five years.

A spokesperson for Kraus-Anderson, the development company that owns the mall, said there are not solid plans yet for replacements. Kraus-Anderson and the city of Bloomington have been trying to revamp the property for almost a decade.

The company had the city declare the two vacant stores “structurally substandard” in October, a designation that opens the door for tax incentives from the city for redevelopment.

Assistant Bloomington Port Authority administrator Jason Schmidt said in October that the incentives could help push the kind of pedestrian-friendly redevelopment the city has hoped for along Penn Avenue and the Orange Line bus rapid transit route.

Kraus-Anderson touted the mall’s high occupancy rates after the 2008 recession. But more recently, major tenants have disappeared as big-box retail chains have gone out of business. The Herberger’s building has been vacant since the department store chain shut down in 2018, and the Toys “R” Us store was emptied in 2015. Bed Bath and Beyond closed its Southtown store earlier this year.

In 2014, the city and Kraus-Anderson clashed on a proposal to rezone Southtown to push smaller-scale shops and apartments.

Then in 2021, Kraus-Anderson proposed a Hy-Vee grocery store and liquor store, with the possibility of building high-rise office and apartment buildings around the shops, but it withdrew the proposal a few months later.