Third in a series.
In the mid-1960s El Con Shopping Center was in turmoil; its co-owner had set out to develop a competitor.
Joseph K. Kivel's Park Mall was to be 2.9 miles east of its forerunner, and on the same street - East Broadway. The proximity of the two sites guaranteed that El Con would lose a huge chunk of its sales.
That outlook was less than pleasant for Kivel's co-owners at El Con, but sources say that it was for other reasons that a vast rift soon developed between Kivel and the Papanikolas family, particularly Gus Papanikolas, president of Magna Investment & Development Corp.
Many El Con merchants say that for years, Kivel thwarted the full development of El Con to promote his exclusive holding, Park Mall. And they say that outraged the late Gus Papanikolas of Salt Lake City.
"I think the way Joe saw it was that, 'A dollar is 50 cents for me at El Con, but a dollar is a dollar for me at Park Mall,' " said one merchant, recalling that "some of the biggest names in the retail industry '' wanted space at El Con but couldn't get it.
"Time and again we had major corporations calling and saying that their real estate people were interested in leasing at El Con, but that the resident partner (Kivel) only talks about some other center."
From 1960 to 1974 El Con was the sole regional shopping center for Southern Arizona and northwestern Mexico, and was thus one of the most desirable retailing sites in the country.
Kivel, however, says he never interfered with El Con's developent.
"Penney's really wanted to come in here (at Park Mall), but in order to avoid any controversy I let them into El Con," the developer said. "Also, I was instrumental in putting in clauses in a large number of the El Con leases — I’d say with everybody who would go along with it — that excluded them from opening within 5 miles of El Con."
Still, a prominent local retailer says that Kivel's nephews, who own nearly 17 percent of El Con but nothing at Park Mall, "knew they were being screwed and were unhappy about it, but they didn't see my way out" short of joining forces with Magna and thus creating an irreparable split among the Kivels.
The developer rejected that comment as absolutely untrue. His nephew Alvin Kivel, owner of Korby's department store, said the development of Park Mall was simply a separate business venture, but declined to elaborate.
Former El Con general manager Joe Pesci said management of the regional shopping center became bogged down for years because the owners disagreed about even minor issues such as overtime for maintenance men. Sources said that for a brief period, neither Kivel nor Papanikolas would talk to the other and communication had to be handled by Pesci or by El Con's attorney, Charles E. Conner.
In September 1974 city planners recommended that a request by Levy's for a third-floor addition be denied until the store filed a full-scale development plan. Levy's officials said their hands were tied by El Con's owners, who could not be talked into cooperating.
Mayor Lew Murphy suggested that the city "haul the owner's can in here and tell him that if he wants to continue doing business, he'd better start cooperating." Following up on Murphy's suggestion, the council ordered the city attorney to study the possibility of a more restrictive code for Park Mall in order to force Kivel to help Levy’s.
As conditions deteriorated, the El Con Merchants Association threatened to file suit to force the warring developers to meet and agree on a management policy that could bring peace to the mall.
During one argument in Conner's downtown offices, Kivel and Gus Papanikolas had to be separated by the office staff and relatives, and in other meetings the two developers would speak to each other only through intermediaries. Said Leon Levy, former owner of Levy's: "Kivel and Papanikolas fought all the time . . . I separated them myself, a dozen times . . . they just wouldn't speak for long periods of time."
The end of the feud depended finally on an informal agreement: The Papanikolas family would manage the mall while the Kivels, for their part, would stick to opening their checks.
Kivel downplays his differences with the Salt Lake City developer, saying, "We may have had heated arguments, but never a physical fight . . . Gus was the kind of guy who thought everyone was trying to take advantage of him. It was really tough trying to talk to a guy like that."
Kivel said that since the death of Gus Papanikolas in August 1978, his brother John has acted as the principal partner for Magna at El Con, "and we haven't had a cross word.”
Tomorrow: The long-delayed development of Park Mall.
