Hot property: West Ridge Market

Where: 11544 Wayzata Blvd., Minnetonka

Type: Retail

Size: 7,810 square feet

Owner: CSM Corp.

Developer: Baja Sol Restaurants Group

Details: It's getting harder nowadays to find big restaurant anchor-tenants for suburban shopping malls: The late 2007 bankruptcy filing of the Don Pablo's Mexican restaurant chain amply demonstrated that situation. A number of U.S. Don Pablo's were closed, including a big one in Minnetonka's West Ridge Mall.

Inver Grove Heights-based Baja Sol Restaurant Group has picked up several locations, including one in Columbus, Ohio and the one in Minnetonka.

If approved, the Minnetonka outlet would be the third Baja Sol "cantina" -- the company's full-service restaurant concept -- to join its legacy counter service shops. A recently opened Grill & Cantina in Eden Prairie, replacing a onetime Chevy's Fresh Mex across from Eden Prairie Center, has been highly successful, Sutton said. She added that West Ridge would have the same franchisees as the Eden Prairie outlet.

West Ridge owner-builder CSM Corp. of Minneapolis says that a final lease deal with Baja Sol is close, and that if completed would bring the 250,000-square-foot mall up to full occupancy -- not bad at a time when the average fourth-quarter retail vacancy rate in the Twin Cities was 5.8 percent, according to commercial real estate firm Colliers Turley Martin Ticker.

West Ridge Market was one of the Twin Cities' first transit-oriented, mixed-use redevelopment projects. Opened in 1996, it included more than 400 units of housing to go along with the bustling retail space.

"West Ridge is anchored by Dick's Sporting Goods, Michaels and Bed Bath & Beyond," said CSM leasing agent Justin Wing. "It was very important to get a new restaurant there, and Baja Sol will be a great use for the center. That area of town has always been underserved for Mexican restaurants, so they'll capture a lot of that business in that market."

Officials at Baja Sol say they expect to add seven new locations this year, bringing the total to 25.