Slick City Action Park signed a 20-year lease earlier this spring to the former Sears store at Sunrise Mall with Ethan Conrad Properties. As part of its recent lease, Slick City is removing an existing second interior floor in the former Sears to create an open-air recreational slide concept. Photo courtesy of Slick City Action Park

CITRUS HEIGHTS, CA (MPG) - Interior demolition of two floors of the former Sears store at Sunrise Mall has begun to make way for 31,160-square-foot flagship location of Slick City Action Park, a new indoor slide park.

The new Slick City Action Park is located at 5900 Sunrise Blvd., Suite 100 and will feature a wide range of proprietary dry slides, air courts and a toddler zone.

Slick City Action Park signed a 20-year lease earlier this spring to the former Sears store at Sunrise Mall with Ethan Conrad Properties. As part of its recent lease, Slick City is removing an existing second interior floor in the former Sears to create an open-air recreational slide concept.

Described by the company as a “water park, just without the water,” the new Citrus Heights Slick City will offer indoor slides and a variety of air courts.

The parent company is headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri and Nashville, Tennessee.

A project foreman allowed a brief look inside a work entrance to the former three-level Sears store where work crews were seen removing interior ceiling materials and HVAC ducting on the ground floor, exposing the concrete floor above. The basement floor is not included in the planned renovations.

Much of the general project was illuminated by the store’s former entrance to the Sunrise Mall, visible across the length of the former ground sales floor. The silhouettes of two escalators which once carried shoppers and their purchases were also visible in the distance.

Piles of removed metal ceiling framework were awaiting disposal to large recycling dumpsters placed outside.

“Slick City is a rapidly growing children’s entertainment brand with 35 operating parks and more than 150 additional locations signed or currently in development nationwide,” said Mona Escudero, a marketing manager for Sacramento-based Ethan Conrad Properties, in an earlier press announcement.

“This location is planned to serve as the company’s flagship venue,” she said.

Neither a representative for Ethan Conrad Properties, nor a corporate representative for Slick City responded to a request for further comment about the Citrus Heights project, or its likely completion timeline.

Slick City delivers a complete “park in a box” to franchise and corporate locations such as the new Citrus Heights location, by producing and installing every attraction in every park, according to the company marketing materials.

With 20 unique slide designs and a robust pipeline of new slides and attractions, modular construction by the company allows for easy cost-effective retrofits of future slide designs into its existing locations.

The only two other Slick City locations open in California are in Southern California in the cities of Ontario and Oceanside.

Ethan Conrad Properties owns the southern end of Sunrise Mall which includes a preschool and several electric vehicle charging stations. The recent lease signed by Slick City does occupy all the former Sears, which closed to the public nearly eight years ago. A free-standing, two-story former Sears Auto Center and Parts & Service building, located at 5840 Sunrise Blvd., is also listed for sale by the developer.

In March, Tallen Capital Partners LLC announced plans to purchase much of the northern end of the mall and carry out the city's approved redevelopment plan, called Sunrise Tomorrow.

In March, the city of Citrus Heights signed an Economic Development Partnership Agreement with sports venue developer The Mettle Shop to bring a sports center to the former Macy’s Men’s building on the opposite end of the Sunrise Mall property. The former Macy’s Men’s, along with most of the mall’s main building excluding Sears, is owned by Namdar Realty Group.

The sale of Sunrise Mall from the Namdar Realty Group to Tallen Capital Partners LLC is still in escrow.

The new sports complex, including an area based around ice sports, is planned to be part of the redevelopment at the northern edge of Sunrise Mall along Greenback Lane.