The $500M Provo Towne Centre Redevelopment: What's Planned, What's Decided, What's Not

Every Provo kid of a certain era has a memory of the Towne Centre when it was the mall — packed parking lots, food-court birthdays, the works. Those days are long gone, and the numbers behind the quiet hallways are now driving the biggest redevelopment proposal in the city: a roughly $500 million plan to turn 23 acres of East Bay, mall included, into what the developers themselves call a "mini town."

The plan is real, the money is real, and the process is well underway — but less has been decided than the renderings suggest. Here's where things stand.

Who's behind it

Brixton Capital, a California-based real estate investment firm, owns the Provo Towne Centre property. Its local partner is PEG Companies, the Provo-based development and investment firm. The two have been working the concept with the city for years; Brixton project executive Justin Long told the Planning Commission the team had spent four years on it. Phase one is already standing: the Target on the south side of the mall.

What's proposed

The redevelopment covers 23 acres Brixton owns in East Bay — the mall itself plus the neighboring Shady Acres Mobile Home Park. The headline pieces:

• De-malling the mall. The enclosed interior — including the central rotunda — would be opened up and replaced with an outdoor plaza and a walkable retail, dining, and entertainment district. Three anchors are planned to stay: Target, JCPenney, and Cinemark. Ownership has said it will work with other current tenants who want a place in the new development, with the timing of any interior closure depending on approvals and lease-up.
• About 1,300 apartments in five residential buildings north of the mall, where a parking garage and surface lots sit today.
• 83 townhomes — 72 of them on the current Shady Acres site northwest of the mall, 11 directly north of it.
• A transit logic underneath it all: the site sits near Provo Central Station and the UVX bus rapid transit line, which is why the developers are asking for the city's Interim Transit-Oriented Development (ITOD) zone — the designation Provo created to concentrate dense, mixed-use development around transit.

The developers' argument is blunt: the format is dying. They told the city the Towne Centre ranks in the bottom 20% of U.S. malls for foot traffic, and national research they cited suggests more than 300 of America's roughly 1,200 malls could close within two years. Planning commissioner Lisa Jensen put it more memorably during the March hearing: "It's a zombie mall right now."

The Shady Acres question

The hardest part of this story isn't retail strategy — it's the people living next to the mall. Shady Acres is some of the cheapest housing in Provo, home to longtime residents, many on fixed incomes, some of whom own their homes but not the land under them. Brixton owns the park, and the plan replaces it with townhomes.

What the developer has said: residents would get up to 18 months' notice, the company wants to "work with each of them individually," and 3% of the development's units would be affordable at 60% of area median income. Housing advocates have pointed out that even residents whose homes can be moved face real moving costs and few parks to move them to.

The Planning Commission itself flagged the problem structurally: commissioners recommended the mobile-home section of the property be considered separately from the ITOD rezone, arguing the townhome parcel isn't integrated with the transit-oriented core. "They're completely physically different," commissioner Jon Lyons said. "I don't feel like they're related at all."

There's also the nerd factor

One more thread that makes this a very Provo story: in its quiet years, the Towne Centre filled with local, community-run shops — game stores, hobby shops, small entrepreneurs — and picked up a reputation online as "America's nerdiest mall." At public meetings, a recurring worry has been that a polished national-tenant district would price out exactly the businesses that gave the dying mall a second life. Tenants who spoke publicly haven't necessarily opposed the project — several asked mainly for time and clarity to relocate.

October 2026 update: a revised plan and a draft agreement

The project went back to the City Council in a work session on October 6, 2026, after an open house at the mall a few days earlier that drew more than 100 people. No vote was taken; the public hearing and final council vote were still to be scheduled.

What changed in the plan. After the Planning Commission said the design was too car-oriented, Brixton reworked the central traffic circle into a single lane each way with a drop-off lane, bike lanes, raised crosswalks and landscaped buffers, and added park space, pedestrian connections and a larger community plaza. Target, J.C. Penney and Cinemark stay.

What the draft development agreement says, as summarized in Julie Rose's Provo Notes newsletter:

• Affordability: at least 12% of the apartments affordable at up to 80% of area median income, and at least 3% at up to 60%.
• Financing: the city would apply for a Housing and Transit Reinvestment Zone, letting the developer keep up to 80% of new property taxes for 25 years in exchange for that affordable housing, and would create a public infrastructure district for roads and sewer.
• Sewer: Brixton would advance $3.6 million in sewer impact fees for the wastewater expansion the new homes require.
• Shady Acres: residents in good standing would get $10,000 in relocation assistance and at least 18 months' notice; the townhomes planned for that site would carry a five-year deed restriction against renting.
• Timing: commercial buildings and road improvements come first, and the final phase must start within 15 years.

The open questions city staff raised for the work session were walkability, parking for residents, traffic capacity, and whether the benefits to Provo justify what the developer is asking. Councilman Craig Christensen has objected to the mix of about 1,300 rentals against roughly 75 to 80 for-sale townhomes: "What we don't need in this part of Provo is a bunch more apartments." Public comments go to council@provo.gov.

Where the approvals stand

The proposal needs a general plan amendment, the ITOD rezone, and concept plan approval. Here's the scorecard before the October work session:

• March 11, 2026 — The Planning Commission voted unanimously to recommend the general plan amendment and ITOD rezone to the City Council (with the suggestion that Shady Acres be handled separately). But it voted 6-2 to continue the concept plan rather than approve it, citing traffic, pedestrian walkability, sewer and infrastructure questions, the unresolved Shady Acres impacts — and the fact that the city is currently rewriting its ITOD code, which the commission wants the plan to match.
• April 14, 2026 — The rezone and general plan requests went to the City Council. As of early July, the council has not announced a final vote on them; per reporting this spring, the council planned to take up the Shady Acres question in further work sessions, and no approval has been reported.
• Still ahead — Even with a rezone, the developers must return to the Planning Commission with a revised concept plan — and the commission, not the council, has final approval over that plan.

In short: the land-use framework has momentum, the detailed plan does not yet have a green light, and nothing about Shady Acres is settled.

What it means for Provo

If it's built as proposed, East Bay gets roughly 1,400 new homes, a walkable district next to the city's main transit hub, and a commercial engine where a fading one now sits — the kind of infill Provo's own general plan says it wants near transit. The open questions are the ones the Planning Commission left on the table: whether the traffic and infrastructure work, whether the townhome parcel belongs in a transit zone at all, and what happens to the people of Shady Acres, whose fate currently depends largely on the developer's promises.

Construction, if approvals land, wouldn't start immediately — infrastructure work would come first after a green light, with the residential build-out phased over years.

For the broader housing picture this plugs into, see our Provo real estate market analysis and the BYU Wymount Terrace rebuild — two more fronts in the same valley-wide story of a city rebuilding itself from the inside. We'll track the council's decision and the revised concept plan on The Wire.

Facts current as of July 10, 2026.

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