“HOLLAND TOWNSHIP, MI — A Metro Detroit developer is tapping the architect behind Centerpointe Mall’s successful “de-malling” to design a similar transformation for the struggling Westshore Mall.

Greg Erne, a partner in Southfield-based Versa Development, the mall’s parent company, also has hired the Grand Rapids mall’s current leasing agents to fill Holland’s biggest shopping center with retailers.

The plan, which will take about a year to complete, received the go-ahead from the Holland Township Planning Commission on Tuesday night.

Erne says the mall’s current tenants are very interested in his plan for the shopping center, which will get a new name: The Shops at Westshore, along with a slimmed-down new look.

“They want to know what we are showing them can be built,” said Erne, principal at Versa.

The unanimous approval was an important first step of the major makeover that will strip out most of mall’s spacious interior corridors, and will give stores’ exterior entrances that can be easily accessed by shoppers from the parking lot.

The mall’s 410,480 square feet will shrink by 25 percent, or nearly 100,000 square feet. Westshore’s new 367,000 square feet of leasable space would include 35,000 square feet in four new out lot sites along U.S. 31.

“I applaud what you are doing here,” Planning Commissioner Dennis Gebben told Erne.”

Keep reading: http://www.mlive.com/business/west-michigan/index.ssf/2014/11/metro_detroit_developer_taps_c.html