Horton Plaza’s second act as a $275 million mixed-use office campus was at risk with an acrimonious tenant dispute threatening to kill the project.

Macy’s West Stores, Inc. filed suit in San Diego Superior Court on against new mall owner, Los Angeles-based real estate investment firm Stockdale Capital Partners. The department store, one of the center’s last remaining tenants, aims to stop the developer from converting the retail plaza into a mixed-use office campus. Macy’s contends that the use violates its lease and an even more substantial agreement that essentially gives it veto power over property improvements.

Opened in August 1985, Horton Plaza helped to revitalize downtown San Diego and, according to historians, became the archetype of a successful American mall. In more recent years, however, the outdoor shopping center proved a victim of its fortress-like design and changing retail trends.

Stockdale, a 65-person real estate investment firm based in Los Angeles, purchased the property from Westfield for $175 million in August. It plans to reuse the post-modern buildings for a $275 million high-tech office park called, “The Campus at Horton.”

The office square footage includes four new floors, or 150,000 square feet of space that Stockdale must add to the former Nordstrom building, where a single tenant would presumably take over an open and light-filled building. In addition, the firm needs to remake the Bradley Building, a 1985 recreation of a historic office building, per the contract approved by the city. Stockdale has said it will turn that structure into a food hall that augments the adjacent Horton Plaza Park owned by the town.

Stockdale Capital Partners announced the agreement reached with Macy’s to allow the downtown San Diego project to move forward. The massive overhaul will see the nearly vacant mall turned into a mixed-use tech campus. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The Campus at Horton will serve as an urban hub for San Diegans to gather and a catalyst for thousands of high paying tech jobs, defining the future of downtown. 

The developer envisions the 700,000-square-foot campus will become home to about 3,000 to 4,000 new jobs.