A major redevelopment plan is being proposed for the Citadel Mall property in West Ashley.

A long-struggling urban shopping center is one step closer to redevelopment.

The city of Charleston’s Design Review Board approved guidelines on Oct. 21 for a proposed overhaul of Citadel Mall into the mixed-use " Epic Center " concept with greenspace, entertainment, retail and housing.

Tony Giuliani with the Charleston-based architecture firm Goff D'Antonio Associates brought the application before the board, which was approved 5-0 on the condition that minor revisions be made to the guidelines document.

"We are hoping to start projects in 2025," Giuliani said.

Board member Ben Whitener, who lives a half-mile from the West Ashley mall, said he was “100 percent” behind the project that would create a community destination with walking trails, shaded seating and a Main Street retail environment with restaurants and small shops at the center.

“The key is the urban planning moves that they’re making and I think they’re spectacular,” Whitener said. “I wish they could go further and buy the South Park Plaza next to it.”

In 2020, the city approved a planned urban development to transform the mall's roughly 1.1 million square feet of enclosed space on about 55 acres into about 4 million square feet of mixed real estate uses.

At Monday's meeting, Giuliani along with representatives from property owner Singerman Real Estate Development Management Associates, Urban Design Associates, Design Works and ADC Engineering introduced guidelines for what could be built under the agreement — not the specific concepts.

Singerman, a Chicago-based investment firm, took ownership of the shopping center in January 2023, six years after the property was previously sold for $30 million.

The spaces that house anchor tenants Belk, Dillard's and Target were not included in the transaction.

The Epic Center proposal first surfaced publicly in 2019, before the mall's ownership structure changed. Adam Greenbaum, a senior vice president at Chicago-based Singerman, declined to comment about the project after the meeting.

Street designs, parking standards and building setbacks were among general guidelines that were approved, along with landscaping and architecture styles.

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Scott Parker with Design Works said the landscaping will focus on shade and predominantly native plants. Signage would also work seamlessly into the architecture while lighting would illuminate the public realm and not the buildings.

The board's main hang-up before approval was whether the future Epic Center’s architecture should pull from downtown Charleston’s historic designs to reflect what the city is famous for — or feature an entirely new style.

“People from all over the world visit Charleston for its architecture and history,” said board member Jeff Johnston, who is also a principal architect for SMHa. His opinion was the Epic Center should reflect that.

Whitener countered that West Ashley isn’t Charleston and tourists aren’t heading to the area for the architecture.

“The problem is we don't have the context of peninsular Charleston in West Ashley,” Whitener said. “Do we copy downtown to (the Epic Center)?"

He added that the strength of the project's guidelines is that they're not stylistically or genre specific.

“It’s just promoting nice public, really thoughtful buildings," he said.

Several more approval meetings are necessary with the city before the project would begin, including meetings with the property owner's association and the city's Technical Review Board.

The mall makeover is the second major redevelopment project under consideration in West Ashley.

A roughly $345 million plan for the former Piggly Wiggly site at Sam Rittenberg Boulevard and Sumar Street got an initial approval from Charleston City Council on Sept. 10.