Plans for redeveloping the Valley Fair Mall have been scaled back.

The 37-year-old mall in West Valley City will still be renovated and turned into an outdoor shopping center with plazas, trees and water features, but plans for condos and underground parking have been abandoned.

Planners anticipated building 200 to 250 housing units above the stores and underground parking to accommodate residents and shoppers, but now the mall's owners have announced that the overall redevelopment plan will be simplified.

The change is partly because building housing and underground parking would push the project's completion date back by up to 18 months, said Greg Helm, co-owner of Satterfield Helm Management Inc., which has owned the mall since 2005. An additional 18 months of interference from construction would be devastating to business for the mall's stores, he said Friday.

Also, because the area has a high water table, building an underground parking lot would be difficult and costly, Helm said.

That, paired with recent increases in general construction costs, would have pushed the price of leasing or buying the condos to unreasonable levels.

Even without housing and underground parking, the renovations will be a substantial upgrade to the mall, Helm said. After construction, its retail floor area will have increased from about 600,000 square feet to nearly 1 million square feet.

"We're not downsizing," Helm said. "Things haven't gotten smaller, they've just changed a bit."

Many retailers, including Olive Garden, T.G.I. Fridays, Famous Footwear, Old Navy, Best Buy, Ross Dress for Less, Petco and Joe's Sporting Goods have all expressed interest in opening at the mall after the renovation, Helm said. J.C. Penney, Macy's and Mervyns will remain as anchor stores. A Costco, which was recently built southeast of the mall, is slated to open Aug. 7.

The mall's owners hope to start the renovation construction during spring of next year. The mall will be finished in stages, Helm said, and planners hope to open the first completed stage sometime in 2009, with other stages following in 2010.

Two West Valley City leaders expressed optimism about the project, despite the changes.

"I'm really excited about the mall project in general," Mayor Dennis Nordfelt said. "It fits nicely with the other things we're trying to do."

Nordfelt said he is disappointed that the plan no longer includes housing, but he understands that the developers have to do what makes sense financially.

The mall will play a substantial role in West Valley's city-center plan, which calls for a revamping of the area around City Hall through residential and commercial development, Nordfelt said.

Assistant city manager Paul Isaac said the loss of housing above the mall is not so bad because housing will be developed across the street as part of the overall plan.

"We hope to turn this city center into a really vibrant place to live and shop," he said.

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E-mail: dfelix@desnews.com